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Jef Raskin Document #018 



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736 EDGE WATER, WICHITA KS 67230 USA 
E-MAIL : 71533. 606&COMPUSER VE. COM 



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Macintosh SwyftCard Canon Cat 

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Jef Raskin Document #018 



Canon Cat Computer Historical Information 



Article Name 

Canon's Cat Computer: The Real 

Macintosh 

( this is the Cat article that I made 
public and which has appeared in the 
Historically Brewed magazine and on 

the internet ) 



Author 

David T Craig 



Date 

19 June 1994 



Source 

DTC 
( printed on Apple laser printer ) 

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Canon's Cat Computer: The Real Macintosh 

Copyright 1 994 David T. Craig -- 1 9 June 1 994 

941 Calle Mejia, Apt. 509, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 

CompuServe 71533,606 



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This paper was written for Historically Brewed, the newsletter of the 
Historical Computer Society of El Paso, Texas. Contact Mr. David Greelish at 
CompuServe address 100116,217 if you're interested in old computers and 
want to read fascinating stories about such computers and the people behind 
them. 



If many faultes in this paper you fynde, 
Yet think not the correctors biynde; 
If Argos heere hymselfe had beene, 

He should perchance not all have seene. 



Richard Shacklock (1565) 



INTRODUCTION 

In 1 987 Canon USA Inc. released a new computer named the Canon Cat. This computer 
was targeted at low-level clerical workers such as secretaries. After six months on 
the market and with 20,000 units sold Canon discontinued the Cat. The Cat featured an 
innovative text-based user interface that did not rely upon a mouse, icons, or 
graphics. The key person behind the Cat was Mr. Jef Raskin, an eclectic gadgeteer, who 
began the design of the Cat during his work on the first Macintosh project at Apple 
Computer in 1 979. 

The design and history of the Canon Cat is a fascinating story which this paper attempts 
to tell. I am not a Cat owner nor have I been fortunate enough to have used a Cat. All 
facts within this paper are based on various documents relating to Jef Raskin and his 
work at Apple Computer and Information Appliance, Raskin's company that created the 
Cat. 



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CAT HARDWARE 

The Cat was a 1 7-pound desktop computer system containing a built-in 9-inch black- 
and-white bit-mapped monitor, a single 3.5-inch 256K byte floppy disk drive, and an 
IBM Selectric-style keyboard. 




Figure 1 - The Canon Cat hardware 
The product specs follow {A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh ): 



Size 


Dimensions 




Weight 


Components 


Processor 




Memory 




Mass storage 




Display 




Keyboard 




I/O Interfaces 




Modem 




ROM 


Price 


$1495 



10.7 by 13.1 by 17.8 inches 

1 7 pounds 

Motorola 68000 running at 5 MHz 

25 6K bytes 

One 256K byte internal 3.5-inch floppy drive 

9-inch black-and-white built-in, bit-mapped 

Compatible with IBM Selectric typewriter plus 

control functions on front face of the keys 

One Centronics parallel port, one RS-232C serial 

port (DB-25 connector), two RJ-1 1 jacks (for 

telephone connections) 

Internal 300/1 200 bps, Hayes compatible 

256K bytes 



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CAT SOFTWARE 

The Cat came with an extensive collection of applications stored in ROM. These 
applications supported word processing, spell checking, mail merging, calculator 
calculations, communications, data retrieval, and programming in the FORTH or 
68000 assembly languages. Also present in the ROM was a spelling dictionary based 
on the 90,000 word American Heritage Dictionary. System setup information and a 
small personal user dictionary were stored in 8K of battery-backed up RAM. 

The Cat's user interface made this computer unique when compared to other 
computers. The user interface was based on a simple text editor in which all data was 
seen as a long stream of text broken into pages. Special keyboard keys allowed the user 
to invoke various functions. An extra key titled "Use Front" acted as a control key. 
You pressed Use Front and then a special key to activate a specific feature. For 
example, the L key was marked Disk, the J key was marked Print, and the N key was 
marked Explain (Cat's context-sensitive help facility). Other commands existed 
which let you change the system's various parameters (Setup key) and reverse your 
last action (Undo key). 

When you powered on the Cat you were presented with a display that looked like a 
typewriter with a sheet of paper. Black characters appeared on a white background. A 
ruler bar appeared at the bottom of the screen. The Cat's memory held around 1 60K of 
data which was equivalent to 80 single-spaced printed pages. 

You moved through your data using two extra keys called Leap keys located in front the 
spacebar key and by typing strings of characters. The Cat jumped to the next 
occurence of that string. Raskin claimed that the Cat's Leap-key search method to 
scroll from the top to the bottom of a page took 2 seconds, a mouse took 4 seconds, and 
cursor keys took 8 seconds. Larger documents increased these search ratios. 

The Leap keys also controlled text selection (indicated by hilighting), deletion, 
copying, and moving. If the selected text was a mathematical formula one keystroke 
with a special key calculated the mathematical result and the answer appeared on the 
screen with a dotted underline overlaying the original formula. If the selected text was 
a computer program written in either FORTH or 68000 assembly language, then a 
special key let you execute the program (I don't think many Cat users did any Cat 
programming). You performed mail merges by selecting columnar text data and 
pressing another special key. Repetitive command sequences could be automated by 
assigning commands and text strings to the Cat's numeric keys. One special key let you 
dial a selected telephone number either for voice or modem communications. Data 
received from the built-in modem flowed into your text as if you had typed it. 

The Cat used a 256K floppy disk for storage. Each disk held the entire contents of the 
Cat's memory in addition to system configuration parameters, the user's personal 
spelling dictionary, and the bit-map for the screen. When you inserted a disk the Cat 
read the disk's entire contents into the Cat's memory including the last saved screen 
image. This feature allowed users to transfer their entire Cat environment to another 
Cat by just taking their disk from one Cat and inserting it into another Cat. 

The Cat's simple but powerful user interface received manyipttBttMR For example, 
Bruce Tognazzini, a computer user interface guru who worked for Apple (he now 
works for Sun Microsystems), had the following to say about the Cat {TOG on Interface 
, 2nd printing, 1992, p. 182): 



1x4 

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There are some really good abstract interfaces, ... Jef Raskin's Canon Cat 
interface is another. ... Before he left the (Macintosh) project, Macintosh 
was far more dependent on the keyboard, and Raskin knew what to do with 
the keyboard, too. For example, the Find function on the Canon Cat is 
some 50 times faster than the same function on the Macintosh. Raskin 
didn't use "Command-key equivalents": he designed a true keyboard 
interface from the ground up. 

Ezra Shapiro in his A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh article had the following to say 
about the Cat: 

The Cat represents an eye-opening new approach to data storage and 
retrieval; it will surprise anyone who thought that interface design was a 
dying art. Though the basic configuration appears on the surface to be a 
flexible word processor, the Cat's computational, macro, and 
programming capabilities make it quite possible to build data structures 
that emulate spreadsheets and databases. 

Raskin had the following to say about the Cat and the Apple Macintosh in a personal 
letter dated July 1 987: 

It is as advanced (in terms of human interface) over the Mac as the Mac 
was an advance in its day. 

Raskin's thoughts on the Cat's user interface and other user interfaces from the 
perspective of 1994 follow (The Mac and Me: 15 Years of Life with the Macintosh , 
Draft copy, May 1994): 

The current paradigm of using application programs is inherently wrong 
from an interface design point of view. This is widely recognized, but the 
solution offered is to make them interoperable, which solves some of the 
problems but by no means all. GUIs as presently designed and used are an 
interface dead end. Though they can be patched endlessly, a large jump in 
usability can only come from a completely different approach. The Cat 
computer, which I developed for Canon, demonstrated that my alternate 
approach is implementable and both more productive and more pleasant 
than GUIs. 



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JEF RASKIN AND THE FIRST MACINTOSH 

One can say that Jef Raskin began designing the Cat during his tenure at Apple 
Computer. He started at Apple in January 1 978 as head of its publications department. 
From 1 979 to 1 982 Rasi<in was responsible at Apple for a research project called 
Macintosh. He resigned from Apple in February 1982 when he was Manager of 
Advanced Systems over a disagreement with Steve Jobs, one of Apple's founders, 
concerning the Macintosh's direction. Steve Jobs took over Macintosh development and 
the Macintosh became a mini-Lisa computer which was totally opposite of Raskin's 
ideas for the Macintosh. 

In Raskin's paper The Genesis and History of tlie Macintosh Project (February 1 981 ) 
he provided his thoughts on the main software design criteria for the Macintosh: 

My concepts in designing the software were extreme ease of learning, 
rapid (and thus non-frustrating) response to user desires, and compact 
and quicl<ly developable software. Key elements in designing such a 
system are freedom from modes, the elimination of "levels" (e.g. system 
level, editor level, programming level), and repeated use of a few 
consistent and easily learned concepts. Such software also leads to simple 
and brief manuals without having to sacrifice completeness and accuracy. 
The editor is similar to the LISA editor but does not require the expensive 
mouse. A careful study showed that it is probably faster to use than a 
mouse-driven editor ~ although it is probably not as flashy to see when 
demonstrated in a dealer's showroom. 

In 1 994 Raskin had the following to say about the original Macintosh's software design 
{The Mac and Me: 15 Years of Life with the Macintosh ): 

My unifying software originally was to be a graphics-and-text editor 
within which applications could run as additional commands (via menus), 
all input and output being through the interface designed for the editor. 
Later, the PARC desktop metaphor was adopted from the Lisa group (and 
that from the Xerox Alto and Star computers). Due to the incredible work 
of the Mac software team, the necessary code was designed and squeezed 
into a Toolbox that fit into a relatively small ROM (Read Only Memory) 
that we could afford to put into the product. 

Raskin also had some interesting comments to say in one of his many Macintosh design 
memos concerning the intended users of the Macintosh (Design Considerations for an 
Anthropophilic Computer , 28-29 May 1979): 

This is an outline for a computer designed for the Person In The Street 
(or, to abbreviate: the PITS); one that will be truly pleasant to use, that 
will require the user to do nothing that will threaten his or her perverse 
delight in being able to say: "I don't know the first thing about 
computers". 

The Macintosh's early hardware design was very similar to the Cat's design. One early 
Macintosh design from January 1 980 provided a small screen, a keyboard, and two 
vertical built-in disk drives. Also present in this early Macintosh design was a built- 
in printer. 



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Figure 2 - Preliminary Mock-up of Macintosh computer (circa January 1980) 



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INFORMATION APPLIANCE, THE SWYFTCARD, AND THE 
CANON CAT 

The company that Jef Raskin founded in 1 984 to implement his computing ideas was 
located in Menio Park California and was named Information Appliance Inc. Raskin's 
ideas about computers and the basic concepts for this company are summarized in his 
white paper Information Appliances: A New Industry (February 1 986): 

One of the prophets of the personal computer industry, Alan Kay, has said 
that the true personal computer has not yet been made. I disagree. We 
have, as the ancient curse warns us, gotten what we asked for. We do 
indeed have computers being bought by individuals for themselves; they 
are "personal computers". The problem is that many of us didn't want 
computers in the first place - computers are merely boxes for running 
programs -- we wanted the benefits that computer technology has to 
offer. What we wanted was to ease the workload in information-related 
areas much as washing machines and vacuum cleaners ease the workload 
in maintaining cleanliness. 

By choosing to focus on computers rather than the tasks we wanted done, 
we inherited much of the baggage that had accumulated around earlier 
generations of computers. It is more a matter of style and operating 
systems that need elaborate user interfaces to support huge application 
programs. These structures demand ever larger memories and complex 
peripherals. It's as if we had asked for a bit of part-time help and were 
given a bureaucracy. 

Information Appliance's goal was to create a computer system that would be both 
powerful and easy to use. The company developed a prototype Cat system code-named 
"SWYFT". Doug McKenna, a former company director and now the key person behind 
the Macintosh development tool Resorcerer, said that he proposed that "SWYFT" be 
read as "Superb With Your Favorite Typing" (personal phone call, 15 June 1994). 
Funding for this company came from around a dozen venture capitalists. 

Raskin's business plan was to create and market the Cat using only Information 
Appliance. But the company's backers thought Information Appliances could not do this 
as well as a bigger and already-established company. As such, the venture capitalists 
talked with several computer companies that had an interest in the Cat and selected 
Canon to market the Cat. Canon was responcible for giving the "SWYFT" the product 
name "Cat" (Doug McKenna, personal phone call, 15 June 1994). 

While the Information Appliance engineers developed the Cat the company's venture 
capitalists thought it would be beneficial for the company to release some of the Cat's 
technology as a small board-based product. The result of this was an add-on plug-in 
board for the Apple //e computer. This card was called the SwyftCard, a name which 
obviously was based upon the Cat's code name. The SwyftCard's retail price was $90. 
It is interesting to read Raskin's comments concerning the origins of the SwyftCard 
(Programmers at Work, p. 237): 

We didn't get into business to produce a board for the Apple //e, but it 
seemed like such a good idea that I would have felt very bad not to have 
released the product. I saw a lot of good products at Apple and Xerox pass 
from desktop to desktop, and never get to the market. 

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Information Appliance wrote tiie SwyftCard's on-board software in FORTH, a computer 
language whicii Raskin saw as ideal for this product since it was compact and 
inexpensive to implement. Raskin's comments about how he hired a FORTH 
programmer show the distance Raskin had traveled from Apple, at least from a legal 
perspective {Programmers at Work, p. 238): 

/ went out and hired a FORTH programmer and a few other people, mostly 
personal friends of mine. Nobody from Apple. I didn't touch the company. 
I didn't want to get into any legal hassles, and Apple was nasty enough then 
that I worried about such things. 

The SwyftCard was well received by those who used it. One magazine reviewer had the 
following to say about the SwyftCard (David Thornburg, The Race goes to the Swyft, p. 
86): 

SwfytCard is a small, multipurpose circuit board that plugs into slot 3 on 
an Apple //e, turning it into one of the most useful tools you could ever 
want for word processing, information retrieval, calculation, BASIC 
programming, and — if you have a modem - communication. SwyftCard 
has accomplished something that I never knew possible. It not only 
outperforms any Apple II word-processing system, but it also lets the 
Apple //e outperform the Macintosh. 

The SwyftCard reviewer also had the following to say about the philosophy behind the 
SwyftCard (p. 89): 

SwyftCard was the result of extensive thought about how people might 
want to use computers if they had a choice in the matter, and as a result is 
a spectacular piece of programming. 



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THE CAT'S DEMISE 

After six months as a product, Canon discontinued the Cat in 1 987. Bruce Tognazzini, 
a computer user interface guru, had the following to say about the Cat's demise (TOG on 
Interface , 2nd printing, 1992, p. 182): 

The Canon Cat did not sell well, but this should be attributed to the 
hardware on which it ran, as well as Canon's decision to target this ideal 
interface for professional writers almost exclusively to low-level 
clerical workers, who didn't need its functionality and were confused by 
its "invisible" interface. 

Some people have said that the reasons for the Cat's demise were political. One story 
says Canon's electronic typewriter and computer divisions fought for control of the 
Cat. Canon's president learned of this fight and ordered the divisions to resolve the 
matter soon. The matter was not resolved and the president canceled the Cat to teach 
the divisions a lesson. Another story contends that when Canon wanted to invest in 
Steve Jobs' new post-Apple company, NeXT, Jobs told Canon that it could invest only if 
Canon dropped the Cat. Jobs supposedly was very hostile toward Raskin since Raskin 
had created the Macintosh and Jobs could not stand to be associated with him in any 
way. Canon did buy around 1 6% of NeXT stock in June 1 989 for $1 00 million. (These 
last two reasons were told to me by Owen Linzmayer, the author of the forthcoming 
Macintosh book The Macintosh Bathroom Reader). 

Raskin's thoughts on the Cat's demise follow {The Mac and Me: 15 Years of Life with 
the Macintosh ): 

Canon, possibly because the moribund Electronic Typewriter Division had 
been given the task, failed to market the product effectively, and it is now 
a dead Cat. 

When interviewed in 1986 Raskin answered the interview question "What do you 
think is the biggest problem your business faces?" (Programmers at Work, p. 239): 

How in the world do you sell something that's different? That's the 
biggest problem. The world's not quite ready to believe. It's like in the 
early days at Apple, they said, "What's it good for?" We couldn't give a 
really good answer so they assumed the machine wasn't going to sell. But 
I do know the way I plan to sell my product is by word of mouth. Some 
people will try it and say, "This product really gets my job done. It 
doesn't have fifteen fonts. I can't print it out in old gothic banners five 
feet long, but I sure got that article finished under the deadline." That's 
how I can sell it. Later, people will understand it. 

In retrospect, it appears that most computer users just didn't get it when it came to 
the Cat. 

In 1 989 Information Appliance ended. Doug McKenna, one of the company directors, 
claimed that the venture capitalists behind Information Appliance no longer wanted to 
be part of what they considered a risky venture so they pulled out their financial 
resources causing the company to close its doors (personal phone call, 1 5 June 
1994). 



/« 

X 400v p 

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Information Appliance also liad on the drawing boards at the time of its demise a 2-lb. 
Cat laptop. Only around two were ever built, none exist today (personal phone call 
with Doug McKenna, 1 5 June 1 994). 

Jef Raskin currently owns the patents that formed the Cat's core technolgy. These 
include a patent for the Cat's LEAP method and the saving and loading of all the Cat's 
RAM to disk and from disk. Information Appliance licensed several of these patents to 
other computer companies, but these companies did nothing with this technology. 

One other comment about Information Appliance and the Cat deserves mentioning. 
Raskin claimed that the Cat was made on budget and on schedule, a claim that is very 
rare in the computing industry {The Mac and Me: 15 Years of Life with the Macintosh). 



h X 400v pi) 

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REFERENCES 

The following documents are useful in understanding Jef Raskin's work with the 
Macintosh computer, the SwyftCard, and the Cat computer. Document arrangement is 
by how useful I found them for this paper. Documents marked with * are present in 
the Historical Computer Society's library. The size of each document in pages appears 
at the end of each entry and is enclosed in (). 

* Ezra Shapiro, "A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh", BYTE Maaazine . October 1987, 

pp. 121-123 (3 pages) 

Susan Lammers, "Jef Raskin", Programmers at Work . 1989, pp. 226-245 (20 pages) 

* David Thornburg, "The Race Goes to the Swyft", A+ Magazine . November 1985, pp. 

86-89 (4 pages) 

* Jef Raskin and Apple Computer, The Genesis and History of the Macintosh Project . 

February 1981 (5 pages) 

Jef Raskin and Apple Computer, The Macintosh Research Project: Progress Report of 
Julv 1980 . July 1 980 (9 pages) 

Jef Raskin and Apple Computer, The Macintosh Proiect: Selected Papers . February 1 980 
(171 pages) 

* Jef Raskin, Information Appliances: A New Industrv . February 1 986 (7 pages) 

* Jef Raskin, The Mac and Me: 1 5 Years of Life with the Macintosh . Draft copy, May 

1994 (42 pages) 

Owen Linzmayer, The Macintosh Bathroom Reader . Draft copy, 1 994 
Bruce Tognazzini, TOG on Interface . 2nd printing, 1992 

* John Markoff and Ezra Shapiro, "Macintosh's Other Designers", BYTE Maaazine . 

August 1984, pp. 347-356 (7 pages) 



The End 



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Canon Cat Computer Historical Information | 



Jef Raskin's Comments 
about David Craig's 

1 9 June 1 994 
Cat Computer Paper 

"Canon's Cat 

Computer: 

The Real Macintosh" 



( contains several e-mail correspondences 
between Jef Raskin and David Craig ) 



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Jet Raskin's 29 June 1 994 Critique of 
"Canon'sCatComputer:TlieReal Macintosh" 

( along with David Craig's reply to this critique ) 
David T. Craig ~ CompuServe 71533.606 



Sender: raskinJGf@aol.com 

Received: from mail02.prod.aQl.net by dub-img-l.compuserve.com 

(8.6.4/5.940406sam) 

id AAAl 1 182; Thu, 30 Jun 1994 00:S8:21 -0400 
From: <RaskinJef@aol.com> 
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Sender: "RaskinJef" <RaskinJef@aol.com> 
Message-Id: <9406300058.tnI96982@aol.com> 
To: 71533.506@compuserve.com 
Date: Thu, 30 Jun 94 00:58=17 EDT 
Subject: Cat Article 

JEF RASKIN/ 8 GYPSY HILL 

PACIFICA CA 94044 USA 

PHONE: 415-359-8588 / fAX- -9767 

Internet: raskinjef@aol.com 37x37'37"N 122x3riO"W 

29 June 1994 

Dear David, <7!533.606@compuserve.corn> 

1 got your document and sent some comments into the aether. 1 have no idea 
why they didn't get to you. It is great that you are documenting the Cat, and 
aside from a few specific details, it gives a good overall impression of what 
we did and what happened. Congrats. 

The paper version is a little bit different than what I remember reading 



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(this may be due to differnces or a fading memory), and I will comment anew. 
First of all, your quote from Shack lock (you have changed at least one word 
in the quote, by the way, and should call it a paraphrase...), you might be 
pleased to learn that we used the same quote in one of the Apple manuals 1 
wrote with Brian Howard many years ago. is that where you found it or did you 
dig it up elsewhere? 

Comments on the content: 

If you are ever in the bay area, you should try the Cat. 1 would not call it 
"The Real Macintosh" as it had many ideas that were invented after 1 left 
Apple as well as some invented before that did not apply to the Mac or which 
Apple was not interested in. 

The floppy drive on most Cats held 384K bytes, not 256 kbytes. A few at 
introduction had the smaller memories. 

The keyboard was not quite compatible with a Selectric, it had a number of 
keys (such as UNDO) as well as the LEAP (TM) that were not on the Selectric, 
and some of the keys were not in the same location. 

The modem was an auto-answer, auto-dial modem. The initial price was $1495, 
but the design price was $795 and Canon lowered the price to that level after 
a few months. 

In the list of software abilities you omit the all-important spreadsheet 
abilities. 

The stream of text was not just broken up into pages but also into documents. 
Your description of how Leap works is not quite right. My 1989 article 
"SystGrnic Implications of a n Improve d Two-Part Cursor ." in the Proceedings 
of the Computer Human InterfaceTonference, 30 April 1989. has exact details. 
Many people think that it worked the same as the EMACS find, but there are 
significant differences that strongly decreased the error rate vs. the EMACS 
method. 

The ability to program directly in the interface was designed for third-party 
developers, so that they would not have to buy as special development 



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program. Third-party software expansion was a very importanl part of the 
design and our Technical Documentation manual had details on how to do it. 

don't think you mean "platitudes" on page 3. Platitudes are hackneyed 
expressions, and 1 think you mean expressions of praise, or "plaudits". 

It is certainly not the case that the Mac that came out was "totally opposite 
of Raskin's ideas." For example, 1 designed click-and-drag to replace PARCs 
(and, earlier, Sutherland's) method, which was click one button, move the 
mouse, and then click another button. Of all the things I ever invented, 
click-and-drag for moving and selecting (adapted by Atkinson so that it also 
served to pull down menus) is the most widely copied. On the other hand, the 
Cat was designed to be used with a graphic input device once Canon allowed 
its dealers and marketers to admit that it was graphic-based. You quote a 
paper. The Mac and fie, where did you see it? Did I send you a copy of the 
draft? More recent versions (which I have not let out of my computer) are 
more accurate as 1 learn more details from documents 1 keep on finding or get 
sent. A big difference between the (lac and the Cat is that the former was 
designed to feel like a computer, the latter like an appliance. 

ny use of the PITS is from a short story about T.C. Pits (The celebrated 
Person In The Street), and you should cite that source. I will see if 1 can 
remember who wrote it (Thurber?). 

Your photo of a mock-up of an early Mac should have a caption mentioning that 
that was just one of dozens of mockup, lest it give the impression that it is 
a definitive expression of where the team thought we were going. 

An interesting fact about both the Swyft- products and the Cat is that they 
were essentially bug-free, which I attribute to the methods we used for 
managing software development. As far as 1 know, no customer has ever 
reported a bug in either. 

It is not the case that mne of the laptop cats exist. I have two, one is 
still working. Did you mention that it came on instantly when you started 
typing and that, like the present EPA suggestions for green machines, it 
turned itself off when not in use? Another way that it was far ahead of its 
time was in its strong object orientation. It also had what is now called a 



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"suite" of business appiicatioTB long before the term was invented. 

It is also not the case that companies that licensed some of the Cat 
technology did nothing with it. There are still active projects at various 
companies which may turn out products in the next year or two. 

1 do not wish to give the impression by listing these detailed comments that 
1 do not think well of your article. For someone who has never tried the 
product, it is surprisingly good and accurate. Your research is commendable. 
1 will have to dig up the art i cle on the Cat t hat 1 wrote a few years ago 
which tells the same story from my inside perspective. And you really should 
read the one technical article 1 published about the Cat (cited above) before 
publication of your history; it is a primary source for technical details on 
the interface. My view of the business side of the story of the Ca t was told 
in an article I wrote in Midnight Engineering magazine, another reference you 
need to complete your research. (1990 " Venture Vultures " Midnight 
Engineering Vol. 1 No. 2, pg. 55 ff Mar /Apr). 

1 do have tons of documentation and all the manuals. It would cost quite a 
bit to reproduce the tForth manual and the Technical Documentation, and the 
User Manual, perhaps 500 to 700 pages in all. Let me know what you want to 
do. 



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David Craig'sReplytoJefRaskin'sCritique 

Dear Jef: 30 June 1994 

Thanks for the extensive replies to my Cat paper. I will try and get your comments 
and corrections in the paper before its publication in the Historically Brewed journal. 
Some replies to your replies follow: 

> Shack lock 

1 "borrowed" this from your Apple Integer BASIC manual which I've had since 1978 or 
so when I owred an Apple ][. 

> If you are ever in the bay area, you should try the Cat 

1 would like that very much. I've corresponded with Owen Linzmayer, a Mac book 
writer from SF, who said when he spoke with you about your role in the Mac project, 
he also saw your Cat. FYl, he was very impressed with both the Cat and you. His 
book The nac Bathroom Reader should appear in August, you may want to get a copy 
since from the drafts I've read It is very accurate. 

> The ability to program directly in the interface was designed for third-party 
developers, so that they would not have to buy as special development program 

Great way of having a machine "programmer friendly"! Question^ How many 3rd party 
developers wrote anything for the Cat? 1 assume very few given the Cat's short life. 

> 1 don't think you mean "platitudes" 

Thanks for catching this - a big error on my parti 

> It is certainly not the case that the Mac that came out was "totally opposite of 
Raskin's ideas." 

Correct (again). 1 guess 1 was being too general, a vice I believe your Mac 15 year 
history paper takes exception to. 



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> You quote a paper, The Mac and fie, where did yoj see it? 

1 was sent a copy by a person with an interest in computer history. If what he did 
was wrong 1 will tell him. If you _really_ want his name I can provide it, but don't 
want to cause any problems. 

> 1 learn more details from documGnts 1 keep on finding or get sGnt 

I have a rather extensive collection of Apple materials which I've collected since the 
Apple ][ heydays, if you have any areas in mind that you want concrete info I may 
have something. Eg I have extensive Lisa info ranging from the Lisa Product 
Introduction Plan to various technical materials such as Bruce Daniel's 1984 paper 
The Architecture of the Lisa Personal Computer for the IEEE. 

> Your photo of a mock-up of an early flac should have a caption mentioning that that 
was just one of dozens of mockup 

FYI, this is from your wonderful Selected Mac Project Papers: peb 1980. Question: 
Do you have any drawings or other photos of the various Macs you mocked-up? 1 
think these would be fascinating to see. 

> Swyft- products and the Cat is that they were essentially bug-free, which 1 
attribute to the methods we used for managing software development 

Great fact! Few computers can claim this. What methods did you use for your s/w 
management? I've spd<en with Doug tlcKenna who told me that the h/w and s/w 
teams at lAl were very small, somewhere around 4-5 people In each group. Is this 
correct? Concerning cat h/w and Apple, 1 recall reading that you said you stayed 
away from Apple people due to legal reasons. How did you end up with Paul Baker as 
h/w designer? I know of his role in the Lisa's h/w dev. 

> laptop cats 

Doug McKenna said none existed, thanks for the correction. It sounds like these were 
well ahead of their time. 

> not the case that companies that licensed some of the Cat technology did nothing 



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with it 

Good to hear this. Again. Doug McKenna told me that the licenses expired recently on 
these patents and that nothing had been done. Can you say anything in general about 
what these companies are doing with Cat technology? 

> For someone who has never tried the product, it is surprisingly good and accurate 

Thanks. I work as a computer programmer, on the Mac in Santa Fe New Mexico, and 
as such try and deal only with hard facts. I also like history and think that 
historical reporting should be based soley on facts which can be documented. I'm 
always suprised how many factual errors technically-oriented bodes contain (Steve 
Levy's books spring to mind). Most of these errors can be fixed before publication by 
just contacting the people involved in whatever you are writing about. That's why I 
contacted you. 

> I do have tons of documentation and all the manuals 

I would love copies of anything you can spare. 1 would prefer the real thing, ie not 
photocopies, buy If you can't spare any of these items I would be willing to purchase 
photocopies from you. Naturally. I would pay for the copies and the postage. What 
about machines themselves? If you have a Cat or SwyftCard that you don't want 1 
would gladly take them off your hands. I would pay for the postage of this stuff. 

Thanks again for the reply and 1 will try to get what you've said into the final paper. 
Good luck with your computing interests. 

-- DAVID T CRAIG 



~ End of Document — 



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J@f l^aikouii'f @i JmI^ IBM Q@mmmt 

( along with David Craig's reply ) 
David T. Craig ~ CompuServe 71533,606 

JEF RASKIN COMMENTS 

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Subject: cat article redux 

1 . I can send you a SwyftCard, send a self -addressed stamped package for a 3 
X 5 or so PC board. 

2. Two of the three Cat manuals are huge. 1 have only one copy of each and am 
loathe to let them out of my hands. Then there are all our internal 
development notes. This is a bookshelf full of stuff. If you have a friend in 
this area who would want to copy them locally, I would be happy to cooperate. 
I also have a filing cabinet with lots of early Mac stuff as well. 

3. Our software development methods included detailed and specific 



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specifications (which sounds redundant but isn't), reading each other's code, 
having a test routine for every subroutiTO (Forth Word in this case), and 
very extensive commenting in the programs, which often reads like an essay 
with an occasional line of code thrown In. We used a chief-programmer 
organization and worked by "contract" (the programmers chose which parts of 
the task they wanted to do, and estimated how long it would take. The tasks 
were broken down into very small pieces that cojld be coded quickly and 
understood readily, there were no sections of heroic size.). 

Lastly, give credit to Brian Howard fcr turning up the Shacklock quote In the 
first place. 



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DAVID CRAIG'S REPLIES 

Jef: 10 Julu 199^1 

Thanks for the continued Cat and Macintosh correspondence. FYI, I've updated the Cat 
paper per your prior comments and will send you a copy of the printed article in 
Historically Brewed. Due to a deadline I was unable to look at your Cat LEAP paper 
or your vulture paper. I plan to update the Cat paper one more time and provide 
copies to the Historical Computer Society (the maker of Historically Brewed) and the 
Computer History Associated of California. I may send a copy of the final to the 
Apple Library so that your "alma mater" will have some knowledge of what you did 
with your Post-Apple life. 

> 1 can send you a SwyftCard, send a self-addressed stamped package for a 3 
X 5 or so PC board. 

Will do. Would this include a SwyftCard manual? If not, I know someone with a 5C 
who could let me borrow the manual to make a copy. 

> If you have a friend in this area who would want to copy them locally 

I understand your reluctance to part with originals. 1 will see if 1 can get someone 
in the SF area to maybe copy some of what you have. 

> 1 also have a filing cabinet with lots of early Mac stuff as well 

If you have your original Pascal memos I would like to see those. FYI, 1 have the 
source code for UC5D P-5ystem 1 .5. 

> software development methods 

It sounds like you knew what you were doing. I've spoken with Doug McKenna who 
mentioned a few of the Cat developers, his comments follow: 

The Cat's software was written mostly in PORTH by Jim Straus (now at Global 
Village). Parts of the software were written in 68000 assembly language by Jim 
Bumgardner. The 68000 assembler was Itself written in FORTH. 



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Of these names who was the "chief -programmer"? I know Paul Baker was head of 
h/w design. Who else was involved in the h/w and s/w design? I'm curious to know 
what you had made in terms of technical docs. Do ycxi have any h/w theory or s/w 
theory docs on the Cat? 1 believe your SwyftCard manuals have this type of info. I 
assume you have Cat h/w schematics. From your description of the Cat development 
process it seems that the Cat s/w could be an excellent example of how to write 
software. Have you given any thought to making this s/w public? It seems to me 
that this software could provide some valuable lessons far other programmers. When 
1 worked fcr a s/w dev company for several years 1 produced a short paper on the 
lessons 1 and the company learned. Do you have something like this? 

Concerning MAC AND ME. will this be a book? What is your schedule? From what I've 
read so far you've done a great job and the stories you have to tell are fascianting. 

Thanks again for the feedback. 1 hope my questions aren't a waste of your time. 

~ David T. Craig 

Jeff: 10 July 1994 

Concerning your software development methods do you have any metrics on this 
software? I'm curious to know a little about the architecture of this code since 
from what you've said about this being bug-free it sounds like this is a great piece 
of software. 

I'm looking for the following s/w info: 

- FORTH object code size 

- 68000 object code size 

- FORTH word count 

Some other not as technical questions follow. 1 hope you can answer these since 
some may pertain to confidential/proprietary info. 

- How long did it take to design the Cat s/w? Same for h/w? 

- Was the Cat s/w-h/w original design followed closely? I.e. was the final Cat what 
you had planned to make? 

- Do you have any planning docs yoi can make available? 



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Jef Raskin Document #018 



- How much did it cost to create the Cat s/w? Same for h/w? How does this 
compare to other projects that you've been involved with (e.g. Apple projects)? 

Do you have a listing of the wo-d names from the source code? I'm looking for 
something that something like the Pascal ProcNames utility would have produced for 
FORTH. 

— David T. Craig 



~ End of Document ~ 



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Jef Raskin Document #018 



CompuServe JEF RASKIN E-Mail 

David T. Craig - 24 JULY 1994 
736 Edge water, Wichita, Kansas 67230 [316-733-0914] 



I Frow: ] INTERhET : Rask i nJef 600 1 . com 
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7 1533 . 606gcc«puserve . com 

Ctavid, 



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7 1 533.606@compuserve.com 

David, 

Doug McKenna gave you a good start, liere's the rest of the Information 



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Jef Raskin Document #018 



Appliance programming team. The Chief Programmer was Jim Straus, to be sure. 
A major part of the code was written by Forth expert Terry Holmes, along with 
John Bumgarner and Jonathan Sand. I think that most of the code was written 
by Holmes and Straus. 

The contract for the Canon Cat was signed about 1 1 months before the product 
first appeared. The hardware development. Including three custom chips, was 
done In this time. Paul Baker led an extraordinary effort. The software was 
written In this time though it had a head start via the SwyftCard 
development I had a lot of ideds Qboul how reliable software could be 
developed quickly, this project gave me a chance -to test m^ fheorfes of 
software management, and they seemed to work very well in practice. 

Your other questions will have to wait for a day when I have more time to 
sort through the documents; if I spend too much time looking back 1 will 
hardly have time to move forward with new work (which is much more exciting). 
It was Important to my reputation and potential for moving the field ahead 
that I help correct the misleading reports that minimized my work at Apple, 
but that is partly accomplished (thanks to people like yourself who are 
digging out the facts). 

As I said in my last note, I would be glad to cooperate In making files 
available to serious historical research, but I probably should wait until i 
retire if I am to do such myself. The problem with The Mac and Me Is that it 
seems to be too long for an article, too short for a book. I shall seek a 
place for it in the next few months. 

By the way, I hate CompuServe's use of numbers as names. Totally unmemorable. 
We shouldn't have phone numbers either, but that's another discussion. Did 
you see my review of Stress's book In this month's IEEE Spectrum? It has a 
bit of history In it. 

-jef 



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Mane: 



Address: 



Subject. 



IMTEFttlET : Rask i nvtefeoo 



irfTERfCT : Rask i nJef§ao I 



♦Postage Due+-0-0- 



□ Fteceipt 



Jef: 



12 July 1994 



O 



Thanks again for rehashing what you may consider "ancient history". Given 
that ng Cat paper is "officially" done <i.e. its text has been added to the 
next addition of Historically Brewed's files) there is no njsh on anything I 
may ask for relating to the Cat. I do want to pH^oduce version 1.! of this 
paper which would include your many helpful consents and facts from your 
articles on the Cat and the venture vultures (I've ordered these from my 
local library via inter-library loan — I obtained your QuickDraw paper from 
Pern State this way). If you can find yow" Cat history paper I would very 
■uch like a copy. I plan to place this pcip&- on the various info systeits 
such as CoapuServe and ftacrica Cfcr-Line. 



oc 



Jef: 12 July 1094 

Thanks anain for rehashing what you may consider "ancient history". Given that my Cat 
paper is "officially" done (i.e. its text has been added to the next addition of Historically 
Brewcd's files) there is no rush on anything I may asl< for relating to the Cat. I do want 
to produce version 1.1 of this paper which would include your many helpful comments and 
facts from your articles on tha Cat und the vt;nlut e vultures (I've ordered these from my 
local library via inter-library loan — I obtained your QuickDraw paper from Penn State 
this way). If you can find your Cat history paper I would very much like a copy. I plan to 
place this paper on the various info systems such as CompuServe and America On-Line. 

> here's the rest of the Information Appliance programming team 

Thanks. FYI, I've written Baker at Apple about the Cat and have yet to hear from him. 

> It was important to my reputation and potential for moving the field ahead 
that I help correct the misleading reports that minimized my work at Apple, 
but that is partly accomplished (thanks to people like yourself who are 
digging out the facts) 

Glad I can be of some help in setting the historical record straight. 

> The Mac and Me ... I shall seek a place for it in the next few months 

I understand your reluctance to spend too much time on M&M. Vou may want to serialize 
it in the Computer History Association of California. It produces a regular journal (The 



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Jef Raskin Document #018 



Analytical Engine) covering California-based computing history. M&M may fit in well 
liere. You would retain the rights to your story. If interested, contact Mr. Kip Crosby at 
CompuServe address 72341,2763. His home phone in El Cerrito CA is 510-527-7355. I'm 
a member of this group and have enjoyed the AE issues (4 so far). 

> I hate CompuServe's use of numbers as names 

I totally agree. I use CIS' Information Manager which provides me with a list of names 
that I click on. The address then appears in its box. As such, this lets me ignore these 
numbers. Your INTERNET address is also in my CIS "phone boak' so I don't need to 
remember it eilhei. 

> see my review of blross'b book in this month's IEEE Spectrum 

I haven't seen this, will check it out. I've read some of your copy in Wired and have liked 
the reviews. 

Concerning the Cat and what I believe is called "SWYFT Technology" why did you not 
market the Cat after its Canon demise? I assume you held the rights to this technology 
while Canon served basically as a seller. 

— David 



hknte: 



flddress: 



rr^ 



INTERNET : Rask i nJefeoo 



INTEWCT : Rask i nJefSao I 



Subject: +Postage Due+-0-0- 



Q Receipt 



.)ef: 

Just as I sent you my reply I noticed one sentence that could be misleading. 
"I picm to place this paper on the various info systems" refers to my Cat 
paper, not your Cat history papet^. 

-- Dauid 



o 



0- 



^ 



35 



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Siijject: Re: -8-0- 


Hi! 
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I «i 1 1 answer your last question now, and return to the others another day as 


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It is late: Canon was building the product in Japan. Ue didn't have the 


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id Uflfl15475; Thu, 21 Jul 1994 20:46:35 -8400 


•:•*•; 








:=: :' 






Received: by iBaiie2.prod.aol.net 


iil 






(1.38.193.5/16.2) id flfi28263j Thu, 21 Jul 1994 28:46:35 -8400 


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X-Mailer: Rnerica Online Mailer 


m 






Sereler: "Uiggoney" <lliggoneyeaoI .coib> 


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Message-Id : <94872 12846 . tn07232eao 1 . com> 


ill 






To: 71533.606gcofflpi4serve.coffl 


i 






Date: Thu, 21 Jul 94 28:46:23 EDT 


II 






Subject: Cat 


iii 






Tht<rik5 for tho nriir\a H is indeed a fascinoHrwj *rtfM~M citvJ I er^jiyetl 


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reading it 


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One of the most important messages is conveijed in a quote from Ruiskin: It s 








as if we had asked for a bit of part-time help and were given a bureaucrcKy. 


"ii 






The power of this statement hits home. I have often asked myself why I and 


8 






others like me ore predisposed toward using a computer to accomplish a task 


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silien a simpler tool, like pfr..: i( umI i^per, would suffice I &'..'' t.ive «n 


iii 






answer. 


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Raskin's quote ignores one important fact. Instead of saying ...given a 


II 






bureaucracy," he should have said: °. . .offered a bureaucracy, and we bought 
it!" 


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There are a few minor mechanical errors, which I will be happM to point out. 


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David T. Craig: CompuServe JEF RASKIN E-Mail ( 24 JULY 1994 ) 5 




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Source: 


David T. Craig Page 0031 of 0069 ^ 



Jef Raskin Document #018 



Nome: 



Rddress : 



UEJ 



I liTERhET : Rask i n Je f Poo 



INTERNET : Rask i nJef Pao I 



c 



cc; 



D 



Subject: +Poslage Due+- 



[] Rece i pt 



Jef: 



14 Now Q4 



O 



Thanks for the reply. Please tc*Le your time on uihatever questions of mine 
gou decide to answer. I know you have otfwr more pressing and iRore modern 
items on your agenda than ancient computer histcM^y. I appreciate very much 
the time you've already spent on my account and don't want in any i»ay to 
interfere uiith your time on mcM"e important matters. 

Regards, 
David 



Ml 



M 



o 



2 







1 


[From:] INTERI«T : Rask inJefPaol .com Sent: 11/15/94, 1:84 


fill 


Subject: +Postage Due+Re: - 613 characters 




Sender: raskinjeffaol com 




(^ 


Rece 1 ved : from ma i 1 02 . ma i 1 . ao 1 . com by ar 1 - i mg- 1 . CompuServe . com 






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id Dflfl21163; Tue, 15 Nov 1994 83:01:87 -0508 




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From: < Rask in Jef gaol .com> 




•:•:■: 


Received: by mai I02.mai 1 aol com 




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< 1.38. 193. 5/16. 2> id flfl28611; Tue, 15 Nov 1994 03:81:06 -0580 




iijii: 


Date: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 83:91:06 -0588 




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Nessoge-Id : <94 1 1 158 15332 7874 189eaoi . com> 




liijlj 


To : 71533. 606f CompuServe . com 






Subject: Re: - 






Thanks, but remember that I am still happy to help you with your project, i 


t 




is proving most educational for me. More holes in my memory get filled in. 




iii 


and mismemories corrected. 




jijiii 


Thanks again 




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*n 




, ,„!■;> 



David T. Craig; CompuServe JEF RASKIN E-Mail ( 24 DEC 1994 3 13 

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[ From: 1 I liTER^ET : Rask i n Je f gao I com 
Subject: +Postage Due+- 



Sent: 11/15/94, 12 :K m 
1380 Characters 



Sender : rask i n J e f §ao I . ccut 

Rece i ved : from laa i 1 82 . nio i i . ao i . com by ar I - i tug- 1 . CompuServe . com 

<8.6.4/5.940406sani) 

id Cflfl28Q29; Tue, 15 Now 1904 02:58:29 -0580 
From : <Rask i nJef Poo 1 . com> 
Rece i ved : by ma i 1 02 . nwi i I . ao I . com 

(1.38.193.5/16.2) id flfi27168; Tue, 15 Mow 1994 02:58:28 -0589 
Date: Tue, 15 Nov 1994 02:58:28 -0588 
Message-Id: <941 1 15014805_7871274eaol .com> 
To : 71 533 . 606gcoiBpuserve . com 
Subject: - 



I rarely use the Cat. Not only are the UNDO and the DELETE key exchanged (a 
real human-factors disaster that Canon foisted upon us without warning), but 
time has passed it by. I often wish I had LEAP, and the ability to do 
calculations, spreadsheets, and conunun i cat i ons directly from my loord 
processor and a CRT-type interface instecKJ of this ©JI I am using, but when 
using the CRT I cannot have CflO to do design or music programs to compose 
with etc. since no third party would write for a long-gone product. The CRT 
Is very outdated now (though its interface basics ar& not). 

We got royalties on about 20,006 units. I don't think they would have paid 
royalties on units they didn't sell, so that's the best number I have. 

I usual ly refer Cat questions to Bob Wing or John Bumgarner who are among 
those that have nesj&r given up on the product, having less complex needs. 



o 



a: 



o 



^Q 



Name: 



Address : 



LUD 



INTERNET : Rask i nJefPao 



S«Aject: +Postage Due+- 



IMTERNET : Rask i nJef gao 1 1 [ cc: ] 

n Receipt 



Jef: 15 Nov 94 

Thanks for the Cat info and the names of the people who still use the Cat. 

Regards, 
David 






^> 



o 



David T. Craig; CompuServe JEF RASKIN E-liail ( 24 DEC 1994 J 14 

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Jef Raskin Document #018 



Canon Cat Computer Historical Information 



Article Name 

Canon^s Cat 

The Swyft Computer 

Or, Jef Raskin's Macintosh Computer? 

( reprint of dtc's Cat article with minor 
changes/ additions by David Greelish ) 



Author 

David T Craig 

Date 

July-August 1994 

Source 

Historically Brewed # 6 magazine 



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Jef Raskin Document #018 



CANON'S CAT 



THE SWYFT COMPUTER 

Or Jef Raskin's Macintosh computer? 

By David T. Craig 



The Canon Cot 

did not sell well, 

but this should 

be attributed to 

the hardware on 

which it ran. os 

well as Canon's 

decision to 

target this ideal 

interface for 

professional 

writers almost 

exclusively to 

low-level clerical 

workers." 



In 1987, Canon USA Inc. released a new 
computer named the Canon Cat. This 
computer was targeted to low-level 
clerical worl<ers such as secretaries. After 
only six months on the market and with 20,000 units 
sold. Canon discontinued the Cot. The Cat featured 
an innovative text-based user interface that did not 
rely upon a mouse, icons, or graphics. The key 
person behind the Cat was Mr. Jef l?askin, an 
eclectic gadgeteer, who began the design of the 
Cot during his work on the first Macintosh project at 
Apple Computer in 1979. 

The design and histoiy of the Canon Cat is 

fascinating story which this article attempts to tell. 

1 am not a Cat owner nor have I been fortunate 
enough to have used a Cat. All facts within this 
paper are based on various documents relating to 
Jef Raskin and his work at Apple Computer and 
Information Appliance, Raskin's company that 
created the Cat. 

CAT HARDWARE 

The Cat was a 1 7-pound desktop 
computer system containing a built-in 9 inch black- 
and-white bit-mapped monitor, a single 3.5 inch 
384K byte floppy disk drive, and an IBM Selectric- 
st/le keyboard. 

The product specs follow; Ezra Shapiro, "A Spiritual 
Heir to the Macintosh", fiVTf magazine, October 
1987: 



Dimensions 10.7 by 13.1 by 17.8 inches 

Weight 1 7 pounds 

Components Processor, Motorola 68000 running 
at 5 MHz 

Memory 256K bytes 

Mass storage One 384K byte internal 3.5-inch 
floppy drive 

Display 9-inch black-and-white built-in, 

bit-mapped 

Keyboard IBM Seiectric-style plus several 

special keys (UNDO & 2 LEAP) 

I/O Interfaces One Centronics parallel port, one 
RS-232C serial port (DB-25 con- 
nector), two RJ-1 1 jacks (for 
telephone connections) 
Internal 300/1200 bps, Hayes 
compatible, auto answer/dial 
256K bytes 
$1495 



Modem 

ROM 
Price 

CAT SOFTWARE 




The Cat came with an extensive collection 
of applications stored in ROM. These applications 
supported word processing, spell checking, 
spreadsheet abilities, mail merging, calculator 
calculations , communications, data retrieval, and 
programming in the FORTH or 68000 assembly 
languages. Also present In the ROM was a spelling 
dictionary based on the 90,000 word American 
Heritage Dictionarv. System setup information and a 
small personal user dictionary were stored in 8K of 
battery backed up RAM. 

The Cat's user interface made this 
computer unique when compared to other 
computers. The user interface was based on o 
simple text editor in which all data was seen as 
a long stream of text broken into pages, which 
could also be broken into documents. Special 
keyboard keys allowed the user to invoke 
various functions. An extra key titled "Use Front" 
acted as a control key. You pressed Use Front 
and then a special key to activate a specific 
feature. For example, the L key was marked 
■Disk", the J key was marked "Print", and the N 
key was marked 'Explain" (Cat's context- 
sensitive help facility). Other commands existed 
which let you change the system's various 
parameters (Setup key) and reverse your last 
action (Undo key). 

When you powered on the Cat, you were 
presented with a display that looked like a 
typewriter with a sheet of paper. Black 
characters appeared on a white background. 
A ruler bar appeared at the bottom of the 
screen. The Cat's memory held around 160K of 
data which was equivalent to 80 single-spaced 

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printed pages. 

You moved through your data 
using two extra keys called "Leap" keys 
located in front of the space key and by 
t/ping strings of characters. The Cat 
jumped to the next occurrence of that 
string. Raskin claimed that the Cat's Leap- 
key search method to scroll from the top 
to the bottom of a page took 2 seconds, a 
mouse took 4 seconds, and cursor keys 
took 8 seconds. Larger documents 
increased these search ratios. 

The Leap keys also controlled text 
selection (indicated by hi-lighting), 
deletion, copying, and moving. If the 
selected text was a mathematical 
formula, one keystroke with a special key 
calculated the mathematical result and 
the answer appeared on the screen with 
a dotted underline overlaying the original 
formula. If the selected text was a 
computer program written in either FORTH 
or 68000 assembly language, then a 
special key let you execute the program (I 
don t think many Cat users did any Cat 
programming). You performed mail 
merges by selecting columnar text data 
end pressing another special key. 
Repetitive command sequences could be 
automated by assigning commands and 
text strings to the Cat's numeric keys. One 
special key let you dial a selected 
telephone number either for voice or 
modem communications. Data received 
from the built-in modem flowed into your 
text as if you had typed it. 

The Cat used a 384K floppy disk 
for storage. Each disk held the entire 
contents of the Cat's memory in addition 
to system configuration parameters, the 
users personal spelling dictionary, and the 
bit-map for the screen. When you inserted 
G disk, the Cat read the disk's entire 
contents into the Cat's memory including 
the last saved screen image. This feature 
allowed users to transfer their entire Cat 
environment to another Cat by just taking 
their disk from one Cat and Inserting it into 
another Cat. 

The Cat's simple but powerful user 
interface received many plaudits. For 
example, Bruce Tognazzini, a computer 
user interface guru who worked for Apple 
(he now works for Sun Microsystems), had 
the following to say about the Cat (,TOG 
on Interface. 2nd printing. 1992. p. 182): 
There are some really good abstract 
interfaces, ... Jef f^askin's Canon Cat 
interface is anott^er. ... Before hie left the 
(Ivlacintosh) project. !\/lacintosh was far 
more dependent on the keyboard, and 
Raskin knew what to do with the 
keyboard, too. For example, the Find 
function on the Canon Cat is some 50 
times faster than the same function on the 
l^acintosh. Raskin didn't use 'Command- 
key equivalents': he designed a true 
keyboard Interface from the ground up. 

Ezra Shapiro in his "A Spiritual Heir 
to the Macintosh" article had the following 



to say about the Cot: The Cat represents 
an eye-opening new approach to data 
storage and retrieval; it will surprise 
anyone who thought that Interface design 
was a dying art. Though the basic 
configuration appears on the surface to 
be a flexible word processor, the Cat's 
computational, macro, and programming 
capabilities make it quite possible to build 
data structures that emulate spreadsheets 
and databases. 

Raskin had the following to say 
about the Cat and the Apple Macintosh in 
a personal letter dated July 1987: If Is as 
advanced (in terms of human interface) 
over the Mac as the IVtac was an 
advance in its day. Raskin's thoughts on 
the Cat's user Interface and other user 
interfaces from the perspective of 1994 
follow: {The fvlac and Me: 15 Years of Life 
with the Macintosh. Draft copy. May 1994) 
The current paradigm of using application 
programs is inherently wrong from an 
interface design point of view. This is 
widely recognized, but the solution 
offered is to make them interoperable, 
which solves some of the problems but by 
no means all. GUIs as presently designed 
and used are an interface dead end. 
Though they can be patched endlessly, a 
large jump in usability can only come from 
a completely different approach. The Cat 
computer, which I developed for Canon, 
demonstrated that my alternate 
approach is implementable and both 
more productive and more pleasant than 
GUIs. 

JEF RASKIN AND THE FIRST MACINTOSH 

One can say that Jef Raskin 
began designing the Cat during his tenure 
at Apple Computer. He started at Apple in 
January 1978 as head of Its publications 
department. From 1979 to 1982 Raskin was 
responsible at Apple for a research project 
called Macintosh. He resigned from Apple 
in February 1982 when he was Manager of 
Advanced Systems over a disagreement 
with Steve Jobs, one of Apple's founders, 
concerning the Macintosh's direction, 
Steve Jobs took over Macintosh 
development and the Macintosh became 
a mini-Lisa computer which was 
substantially different from Raskin's original 
ideas for the Macintosh. 

In Raskin's paper, "The Genesis 
and History of the Macintosh Project" 
(February 1981), he provided his thoughts 
on the main software design criteria for 
the Macintosh: My concepts in designing 
the software were extreme ease of 
learning, rapid (and thus non-frustrating) 
response to user desires, and compact 
and quickly developable software. Key 
elements in designing such a system are 
freedom from modes, the elimination of 
"levels " (e.g. system level, editor level, 
programming level), and repeated use of 
a few consistent and easily learned 



concepts. Such software also leads to 
simple and brief manuals without having 
to sacrifice completeness and accuracy. 
The editor is similar to the LISA editor but 
does not require the expensive mouse. A 
careful study showed that it is probably 
faster to use than a mouse-driven editor - 
although it is probably not as flashy to see 
when demonstrated in a dealer's 
showroom. 

In 1994. Raskin had the following 
to soy about the original Macintosh's 
software design: My unifying software 
originally was to be a graphics-and-text 
editor within which applications could run 
as additional commands (via menus), all 
input and output being through the 
interface designed for the editor. Later, 
the PARC desktop metaphor was 
adopted from the Lisa group (and that 
from the Xerox Alto and Star computers). 
Due to the incredible work of the Mac 
software team, the necessary code was 
designed and squeezed into a Toolbox 
that fit into a relatively small ROM (Read 
Only Memory) that we could afford to put 
into the product 

Raskin also had some interesting 
comments to say in one of his many 
Macintosh design memos concerning the 
intended users of the Macintosh ("Design 
Considerations for an Anthropophilic 
Computer". 28-29 May 1979): This is an 
outline for a computer designed for the 
Person In The Street (or, to abbreviate: the 
PITS): one that will be truly pleasant to use. 
that will require the user to do nothing that 
will threaten his or her perverse delight in 
being able to say: 'I don't know the first 
thing about computers ". 

The Macintosh's early hardware 
design was very similar to the Cat's design. 
One early Macintosh design from January 
1980 provided a small screen, a keyboard, 
and two vertical built-in disk drives. Also 
present in this early Macintosh design was 
a built-in printer. 




One of many preliminary Mock-ups of a 
Macintosh computer (circa January 1980) 

INFORMATION APPUANCE, THE 
SWYFTCARD. AND THE CANON CAT 

The company that Jef Raskin 
founded in 1984 to implement his 
computing ideas was located in Menio 
Park, California and was named 



12 Jul / Au2 1 994 • Historically Brewed #6 



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Information Appliance, Inc. Raskin's ideas 
about computers and the basic concepts 
for this company are summarized in his 
white paper Information "Appliances: A 
New Industry" (February 1986): One of the 
prophets of the personal computer 
industry, Alan Kay. has said that the true 
personal computer has not yet been 
made, i disagree. We have, as the 
ancient curse warns us, gotten what we 
asl<ed for We do indeed have computers 
being bought by individuals for themselves: 
they are 'personal computers'. The 
problem is that many of us didn't want 
computers in the first place - computers 
are merely boxes for running programs - 
we wanted the benefits that computer 
technology has to offer What we wanted 
was to ease the woridoad in information- 
related areas much as washing machines 
and vacuum cleaners ease the workload 
in maintaining cleanliness. By choosing to 
focus on computers rather than the tasks 
we wanted done, we inherited much of 
the baggage that had accumulated 
around earlier generations of computers. 
It is more a matter of style and operating 
systems that need elaborate user 
interfaces to support huge application 
programs. These structures demand ever 
larger memories and complex peripherals, 
ifs as if we had asked for a bit of part-time 
help and were given a bureaucracy. 

Information Appliance's goal was 
to create a computer system that would 
be both powerful and easy to use. The 
company developed a prototype Cat 
system code-named "SWYR ". Doug 
McKenna. a former company director and 
now the key person behind the Macintosh 
development tool Resorcerer, said that he 
proposed that '"S'WYR " be read as 
"Superb With Your Favorite Typing". 
Funding for this company came from 
around a dozen venture capitalists. 

Raskin's business plan was to 
create and market the Cat using only 
Information Appliance. But the company's 
backers thought Information Appliances 
could not do this as well as a bigger and 
already-established company. As such, 
the venture capitalists talked with several 
computer companies that had an interest 
in the Cot and selected Canon to market 
the Cat. Canon was responsible for giving 
the "SWYFT " the product name "Cat". 

While the Information Appliance 
engineers developed the Cat, the 
company's venture capitalists thought it 
would be beneficial for the company to 
release some of the Cat's technology as a 
small board-based product. The result of 
this was an add-on plug-in board for the 
Apple //e computer. This card was called 
the SwyftCard, a name which obviously 
was based upon the Cats code name. 
The SwyftCard's retail price was $90. It is 
interesting to read Raskin's comments 
concerning the origins of the SwyftCard 
(.Programmers at Work. p. 237): We didn't 



get into business to produce a board for 
the Apple //e, but it seemed like such a 
good Idea that I would have felt very bad 
not to have released the product. I saw a 
lot of good products at Apple and Xerox 
pass from desktop to desktop, and never 
get to the market 

Information Appliance wrote the 
SwyftCard's on-board solU/are in FORTH, a 
computer language which Raskin saw as 
ideal for this product since it was compact 
and inexpensive to Implement. Raskin's 
comments about how he hired a FORTH 
programmer show the distance Raskin had 
traveled from Apple, at least from a legal 
perspective (Programmers at Work. p. 
238): / went out and hired a FORTH 
programmer and a few other people, 
mostly personal friends of mine. Nobody 
from Apple. I didn't touch the company. I 
didn 't want to get Into any legal hassles, 
and Apple was nasty enough then that I 
worried about such things. 

The Sv\/yftCard was well received 




InstalTing S¥fy1tCard in Slot 3 

by those who used it. One magazine 
reviewer had the following to say about 
the SwyftCard (David Thornburg, "The 
Race goes to the Swyft, A+, p. 86): 
SwfytCard is a small, multipurpose circuit 
board that plugs into slot 3 on an Apple 
//e, turning it into one of the most useful 
tools you could ever want for word 
processing, information retrieval, 
calculation, BASIC programming, and - if 
you have a modem - communication. 
SwyftCard has accomplished something 
that I never knew possible, it not only 
outperforms any Apple II word-processing 
system, but it also lets the Apple //e 
outperform the IVIacintosh. The SwyftCard 
reviewer also had the following to say 
about the philosophy behind the 
SwyftCard: SwyftCard was the result of 
extensive thought about how people 
might want to use computers if they had a 
choice in the matter, and as a result Is a 
spectacular piece of programming. 

THE CATS DEMISE 

After six months as a product. 
Canon discontinued the Cat in 1987. 
Bruce Tognazzini, a computer user 
interface guru, had the following to say 
about the Cat's demise (TOG on interface 
, 2nd printing, 1992, p. 182): The Canon 
Cat did not sell well, but this should be 



attributed to the hardware on which it ran, 
as well as Canon's decision to target this 
ideal interface for professional writers 
almost exclusively to low-level clerical 
workers, who didn't need its functionality 
and were confused by its 'Invisible " 
interface. 

Some people have said that the 
reasons for the Cats demise were political. 
One story says Canon's electronic 
t/pewriter and computer divisions fought 
for control of the Cat. Canon's president 
learned of this fight and ordered the 
divisions to resolve the matter soon. The 
matter was not resolved and the president 
canceled the Cat to teach the divisions a 
lesson. Another story contends that when 
Canon wanted to Invest In Steve Jobs' 
new post-Apple company, NeXT, Jobs told 
Canon that it could Invest only if Canon 
dropped the Cat, Jobs supposedly was 
very hostile toward Raskin since Raskin had 
created the Macintosh and Jobs could 
not stand to be associated with him In any 
way. Canon did buy around 167o of NeXT 
stock in June 1989 for $100 million. When 
interviewed In 1986 Raskin answered the 
interview questlon"What do you think Is 
the biggest problem your business faces?" 
How in the world do you sell something 
that's different? That's the biggest 
problem. The world's not quite ready to 
believe, it's like in the early days at Apple, 
they said, 'What's it good for? " We 
couidn 't give a really good answer so they 
assumed the machine wasn't going to sell. 
But I do know the way I plan to sell my 
product is by word of mouth. Some 
people will try it and say. 'This product 
really gets my job done. It doesn't have 
fifteen fonts I can't print it out in old gothic 
banners five feet long, but I sure got that 
article finished under the deadline. ' That's 
how I can sell it Later, people will 
understand it In retrospect, it appears that 
most computer users just didn't get It when 
it came to the Cat. 

In 1989. Information Appliance 
ended. Doug McKenna. one of the 
company directors, claimed that the 
venture capitalists behind Information 
Appliance no longer wanted to be port of 
what they considered a risky venture so 
they pulled out their financial resources 
causing the company to close its doors. 
Information Appliance also had on the 
drawing boards at the time of its demise a 
2-lb. Cat laptopl Only around two were 
ever built. 

Jef Raskin currently owns the 
patents that formed the Cat's core 
technology. These include a patent for the 
Cats LEAP method and the saving and 
loading of all the Cat's RAM to disk and 
from disk. Information Appliance licensed 
several of these patents to other computer 
companies, but to date nothing has been 
done with this technology. Raskin claims 
that in a few years some products may 
appear with CAT-like features. 



Jul / Aug 1 994 • Historically Brewed #6 13 

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Jef Raskin Document #018 



Canon Cat Computer Historical Information 



Article Name 
Canon's Cat Computer: The Real Macintosh 

Author 

David T Craig 



Date 

19 June 1994 • Draft Copy 



Source 

DTC 

( printed on the Apple ImageWriter 

dot-matrix printer ) 



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Jef Raskin Document #018 



Canon's Cat Computer: The Real Macintosh 

Copyright 1994 David T. Craig — 19 June 1994 

941 Calls Mejia, Apt. 509, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 

C15 71533.606 

( paper written for the Historical Computer Society of El Paso Texas ) 

INTRODUCTION 

in 1987 Canon USA Inc. released a new computer named the Canon Cat. This computer 
was targeted at low-level clerical workers such as secretaries. After six months on 
the market and with 20,000 units sold Canon discontinued the Cat. The Cat featured 
an innovative text-based user interface that did not rely upon a mouse, icons, or 
graphics. The key person behind the Cat was Mr. Jef Raskin, an eclectic gadgeteer, 
who began the design of the Cat during his work on the first Macintosh project at 
Apple Computer in 1979. 

The design and history of the Canon Cat is a fascinating story which this paper 
attempts to tell. I am not a Cat owner nor have I been fortunate enough to have used 
a Cat. All facts within this paper are based on various documents relating to Jef 
Raskin and his work at Apple Computer and information Appliance, Raskin's company 
that created the Cat. 




Canon 's Cat Computer: Ttie Real Macintosh (David T. Craig - 19 June JSB'f) J 

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CAT HARDWARE 

The Cat was a 17-pound desktop computer system containing a built-in 9-inch 
black-and-white bit-mapped monitor, a single 3.5-inch 256K byte floppy disk drive, 
and an IBM 5electric-style keyboard. 




Figure 1 - The Canon Cat hardware 



The product specs follow {A Spiritual Heir to the Hacintosli)-- 



Size 


Dimensions 




Weight 


Components 


Processor 




Memory 




Mass storage 




Display 




Keyboard 




I/O Interfaces 




Modem 




ROM 


Price 


$H95 



10.7 by 13.1 by 17.8 inches 

17 pounds 

Motorola 68000 running at 5 MHz 

255K bytes 

One 256K byte internal 3.5- inch floppy drive 

9-inch blacl<-and- white built-in, bit-mapped 

Compatible with IBM Selectric typewriter plus 

control functions on front face of the keys 

One Centronics parallel port, one RS-232C serial 

port (DB-25 connector), two RJ-U jacks (tor 

telephone connections) 

Internal 300/1200 bps, Hayes compatible 

256K bytes 



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CAT SOFTWARE 

The Cat came with an extensive collection of applications stored in ROM. These 
applications supported word processing, spell checking, mail merging, calculator 
calculations, communications, data retrieval, arxl programming in the FORTH or 68000 
assembly languages. Also present in the ROM was a spelling dictionary based on the 
90.000 word American Heritage Dictionary. System setup information and a small 
personal user dictionary were stored in 8K of battery-backed up RATI. 

The Cat's user interface made this computer unique when compared to other 
computers. The user interface was based on a simple text editor in which all data 
was seen as a long stream of text broken into pages. Special keyboard keys allowed 
the user to invoke various functions. An extra key titled "Use Front" acted as a 
control key. You pressed Use Front and then a special key to activate a specific 
feature. For example, the L key was marked Disk, the J key was marked Print, and the 
N key was marked Explain (Cat's context-sensitive help facility). Other commands 
existed which let you change the system's various parameters (Setup key) and reverse 
your last action (Undo key). 

When you powered on the Cat you were presented with a display that looked like a 
typewriter with a sheet of paper. Black characters appeared on a white background. 
A ruler bar appeared at the bottom of the screen. The Cat's memory held around 150K 
of data which was equivalent to 80 single-spaced printed pages. 

You moved through your data using two extra keys called Leap keys located in front 
the spacebar key and by typing strings of characters. The Cat jumped to the next 
occurence of that string. Raskin claimed that the Cat's Leap-key search method to 
scroll from the top to the bottom of a page took 2 seconds, a mouse took 4 seconds, 
and cursor keys took 8 seconds. Larger documents increased these search ratios. 

The Leap keys also controlled text selection (indicated by hitighting), deletion, 
copying, and moving. If the selected text was a mathematical formula one keystroke 
with a special key calculated the mathematical result and the answer appeared on the 
screen with a dotted underline overlaying the original formula. If the selected text 
was a computer program written in either FORTH or 68000 assembly language, then a 
special key let you execute the program (I don't think many Cat users did any Cat 
programming). You performed mail merges by selecting columnar text data and 
pressing another special key. Repetitive command sequences could be automated by 
assigning commands and text strings to the Cat's numeric keys. One special key let 
you dial a selected telephone number either for voice or modem communications. Data 
received from the built-in modem flowed into your text as if you had typed it. 

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The Cat used a 256K floppy disk for storage. Each disl< held the entire contents of the 
Cat's memory in addition to system configuration parameters, the user's personal 
spelling dictionary, and the bit-map for the screen. When you inserted a disk the Cat 
read the disk's entire contents into the Cat's memory including the last saved screen 
image. This feature allowed users to transfer their entire Cat environment to another 
Cat by just taking their disk from one Cat and inserting it into another Cat. 

The Cat's simple but powerful user interface received many platitudes. For example, 
Bruce Tognazzini. a computer user interface guru who worked for Apple (he now works 
for Sun Microsystems), had the following to say about the Cat ( TOG on Interface , 2nd 
printing, 1992, p. 182); 

There are some really good abstract interfaces. ... Jef Raskin's Canon Cat 
Interface is another. ... Before he left the (Macintosh) project, Macintosh was 
far more dependent on the keyboard, and Raskin knew what to do with the 
keyboard, too. For example, the Find function on the Canon Cat is some 50 times 
faster than the same function on the Macintosh. Raskin didn't use "Command-key 
equivalents": he designed a true keyboard interface from the ground up. 

Ezra Shapiro in his A Spiritual Heir to the flacintosfi (BYTE magazine, October 1987) 
article had the following to say about the Cat: 

The Cat represents an eye-opening new approach to data storage and retrieval; it 
will surprise anyone who thought that interface design was a dying art. Though 
the basic configuration appears on the surface to be a flexible word processor, 
the Cat's computational, macro, and programming capabilities make it quite 
possible to build data structures that emulate spreadsheets and databases. 

Raskin had the following to say about the Cat and the Apple Macintosh in a personal 
letter dated July 1987= 

It is as advanced (in terms of human interface) over the Mac as the Mac was an 
advance in its day. 

Raskin's thoughts on the Cat's user interface and other user interfaces from the 
perspective of 1994 follow ( Ttie Mac and tie: /5 Years of Life with the Macintosh, 
Draft copy, May 1994): 

The current paradigm of using application programs is inherently wrong from an 
interface design point of view. This is widely recognized, but the solution ottered 
is to make them interoperable, which solves some of the problems but by no 
means all. GUIs as presently designed and used are an interface dead end. Though 
they can be patched endlessly, a large Jump In usability can only come from a 
completely different approach. The Cat computer, which 1 developed for Canon, 
demonstrated that my alternate approach is implementable and both more 
productive and more pleasant than GUIs. 

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JEF RASKIN AND THE FIRST MACINTOSH 

One can say that Jef Raskin began designing the Cat during his temre at Apple 
Computer. He started at Apple in January 1978 as head of its publications 
department. From 1979 to 1962 Raskin was responsible at Apple for a research 
project called flacintosh. He resigned from Apple in February 1982 when he was 
Manager of Advanced Systems over a disagreement with Steve Jobs, one of Apple's 
founders, concerning the liacintosh's direction. Steve Jobs took over Macintosh 
development and the Macintosh became a mini-Lisa computer which was totally 
opposite of Raskin's ideas for the Macintosh. 

In Raskin's paper The Genesis and Hista-y of the Macintosh Project (February 1981) 
he provided his thoughts on the main software design criteria for the Macintosh: 

My concepts in designing the software were extreme ease of learning, rapid (and 
thus non-frustrating) response to user desires, and compact and quickly 
developable software. Key elements in designing such a system are freedom from 
modes, the elimination of "levels" (e.g. system level, editor level, programming 
level), and repeated use of a few consistent and easily learned concepts. Such 
software also leads to simple and brief manuals without having to sacrifice 
completeness and accuracy. The editor is similar to the LISA editor but does not 
require the expensive mouse. A careful study showed that it is probably faster to 
use than a mouse-driven editor ~ although it is probably not as flashy to see 
when demonstrated in a dealer's showroom. 

In 1994 Raskin had the following to say about the original Macintosh's software 
design ( The tlac and tie: js Years of Life with the tlacintosh)-- 

My unifying software originally was to be a graph ics-and-text editor within 
which applications could run as additional commands (via menus), all input and 
output being through the interface designed for the editor. Later, the PARC 
desktop metaphor was adopted from the Lisa group (and that from the Xerox Alto 
and Star computers). Due to the incredible work of the Mac software team, the 
necessary code was designed and squeezed into a Toolbox that fit into a relatively 
small ROM (Read Only Memory) that we could afford to put into the product. 

Raskin also had some interesting comments to say in one of his many Macintosh 
design memos concerning the intended users of the Macintosh {Design Considerations 
for an Anthrqiophi lie Computer , 28-29 May 1979); 

This is an outline for a computer designed for the Person In The Street (or, to 
abbreviate: the PITS); one that will be truly pleasant to use, that will require 
the user to do nothing that will threaten his or her perverse delight in being able 
to say: ■] don't know the first thing about computers". 

The Macintosh's early hardware design was very similar to the Cat's design. One 
early Macintosh design from January 1980 provided a small screen, a keyboard, and 

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two vertical built-in disk drives. Also present in this early Macintosh design was a 
built-in printer. 




Figure 2 - Preliminary Mock-up of Macintosh computer (circa January 1980) 



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INFORMATION APPLIANCE. THE SWYFTCARD. AND THE CANON CAT 

The company that Jef Raskin founded in 1984 to implement his computing ideas was 
located In Menlo Park California and was named information Appliance inc. Raskin's 
Ideas about computers and the basic concepts for this company are summarized In his 
white paper Information j^p I iances: A Nqw Industry i^^\x\izv\^ 1986); 

One of the prophets of the personal computer industry. Alan Kay, has said that the 
true personal computer has not yet been made. 1 disagree. We have, as the 
ancient curse warns us, gotten what we asked for. We do indeed have computers 
being bought by individuals for themselves; they are "personal computers". The 
problem is that many of us didn't want computers in the first place ~ computers 
are merely boxes for running programs — we wanted the benefits that computer 
technology has to offer. What we wanted was to ease the workload in 
information-related areas much as washing machines and vacuum cleaners ease the 
workload in maintaining cleanliness. 

By choosing to focus on computers rather than the tasks we wanted done, we 
inherited much of the baggage that had accumulated around earlier generations of 
computers. It is more a matter of style and operating systems that need 
elaborate user Interfaces to support huge application programs. These structures 
demand ever larger memories and complex peripherals. Ifs as if we had asked 
for a bit of part-time help and were given a bureaucracy. 

Information Appliance's goal was to create a computer system that would be both 
powerful and easy to use. The company developed a prototype cat system code-named 
"SWYFT". Doug hcKenna. a former company director and now the key person behind the 
Macintosh development tool Resorcerer, said that he proposed that "SWYFT" be read as 
"Superb With Your Favorite Typing" (personal phone call, 15 June 1994). Funding for 
this company came from around a dozen venture capitalists. 

Raskin's business plan was to create and market the Cat using only Information 
Appliance. But the company's backers thought Information Appliances could not do 
this as well as a bigger and already-established company. As such, the venture 
capitalists talked with several computer companies that had an interest in the Cat 
and selected Canon to market the Cat. Canon was responcible for giving the "SWYFT" 
the product name "Cat" (Doug McKenna, personal phone call, 15 June 1994). 

While the Information Appliance engineers developed the Cat the company's venture 
capitalists thought it would be beneficial for the company to release some of the 
Cat's technology as a small board-based product. The result of this was an add-on 
plug-In board for the Apple //e computer. This card was called the SwyftCard, a 
name which obviously was based upon the Cat's code name. The SwyftCard's retail 
price was $90. It is interesting to read Raskin's comments concerning the origins of 
the SwyftCard {Programmers at Work, p. 237): 

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Wc didn't get into business to produce a board for the Apple //e. but it seemed 
like such a good idea that I would have felt very bad not to have released the 
product. 1 saw a lot of good products at Apple and Xerox pass from desktop to 
desktop, and never get to the market. 

Information Appliance wrote the SwyftCard's on-board software in FORTH, a computer 
language which Raskin saw as ideal for this product since it was compact and 
inexpensive to implement. Rasl<in's comments about how he hired a FORTH 
programmer show the distance Rasl<in had traveled from Apple, at least from a legal 
perspective {Programmers at W(rk, p. 238): 

1 went out and hired a FORTH programmer and a few other people, mostly personal 
friends of mine. Nobody from Apple. 1 didn't touch the company. 1 dind't want 
to get into any legal hassles, and Apple was nasty enough then that I worried 
about such things. 

The SwyftCard was well received by those who used it. One magazine reviewer had 
the following to say about the SwyftCard (David Thc^nburg, The Race goes to the 
Swyft p. 86): 

SwfytCard is a small, multipurpose circuit board that plugs into slot 3 on an 
Apple //e, turning it into one of the most useful tools you could ever want for 
word processing. Information retrieval, calculation, BASIC programming, and — if 
you have a modem — communication. SwyftCard has accomplished something that 
1 never knew possible, it not only outperforms any Apple II word-processing 
system, but it also lets the Apple //e outperform the Macintosh. 

The SwyftCard reviewer also had the following to say about the philosophy behind the 
SwyftCard (p. 89): 

SwyftCard was the result of extensive thought about how people might want to 
use computers if they had a choice in the matter, and as a result is a spectacular 
piece of programming. 



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THE CAT'S DEMISE 

After six months as a product, Canon discontinued the Cat in 1987. Bruce Tognazzini, 
a computer user Interface guru, had the following to say about the Cat's demise ( TOG 
on Interface, 2nd printing, 1992, p. 182): 

The Canon Cat did not sell well, but this should be attributed to the hardware on 
which It ran, as well as Canon's decision to target this ideal interface for 
professional writers almost exclusively to low-level clerical workers, who didn't 
need its functionality and were confused by its "invisible" Interface. 

Some people have said that the reasons for the Cat's demise were political. One 
story says Canon's electronic typewriter and computer divisions fought for control of 
the Cat. Canon's president learned of this fight and ordered the divisions to resolve 
the matter soon. The matter was not resolved and the president canceled the Cat to 
teach the divisions a lesson. Another story contends that when Canon wanted to 
invest in Steve Jobs' new post-Apple company, NeXT, Jobs told Canon that it could 
invest only if Canon dropped the Cat. Jobs supposedly was very hostile toward Raskin 
since Raskin had created the Macintosh and Jobs could not stand to be associated with 
him in any way. Canon did buy around 16^ of NeXT stock in June 1989 for $100 
million. (These last two reasons were told to me by Owen Linzmayer, the author of 
the forthcoming Macintosh book Tne tiacintosn Bathroom Reader). 

Raskin's thoughts on the Cat's demise follow ( The Mac and Me: /s Years of Life with 
the Macintosh)- 

Canon, possibly because the moribund Electronic Typewriter Division had been 
given the task, failed to market the product effectively, and it is now a dead Cat. 

When interviewed in 1986 Raskin answered the interview question "What do you think 
is the biggest problem your business faces?" {Programmers at Wcrfc, p. 239): 

How in the world do you sell something that's different? That's the biggest 
problem. The world's not quite ready to believe. It's like in the early days at 
Apple, they said, "What's it good for?" We couldn't give a really good answer so 
they assumed the machine wasn't going to sell. But 1 do know the way I plan to 
sell my product is by word of mouth. Some people will try it and say, "This 
product really gets my job done. It doesn't have fifteen fonts. 1 can't print it 
out in old gothic banners five feet long, but I sure got that article finished under 
the deadline." That's how I can sell it. Later, people will understand it. 

In retrospect, it appears that most computer users just didn't get it when it came to 
the Cat. 



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In 1989 Information Appliance ended. Doug McKenna, one of the company directors, 
claimed that the venture capitalists behind Information Appliance no longer wanted to 
be part of what they considered a risky venture so they pulled out their financial 
resources causing the company to close its doors (persmal phcne call, 15 June 199^). 

Information Appliance also had on the drawing boards at the time of its demise a 
2-lb. Cat laptop. Only around two were ever built, none exist today (personal phone 
call with Doug McKenna, 15 June 1994). 

Jef Raskin currently owns the patents that formed the Cat's core technolgy. These 
include a patent for the Cat's LEAP method and the saving and loading of all the Cat's 
RAM to disk and from disk. Information Appliance licensed several of these patents 
to other computer companies, but these companies did nothing with this technology. 

One other comment about Information Appliance and the Cat deserves mentioning. 
Raskin claimed that the Cat was made on budget and on schedule, a claim that Is very 
rare in the computing industry ( The Mac and Me- 15 Years of Life with the Macintosh). 



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REFERENCES 

The following documents are useful in understanding Jef Raskin's work with the 
naclntosh computer, the SwyftCard. and the Cat computer. Document arrangement is 
by how useful I found them for this paper. Documents marked with ♦* are present in 
the Historical Computer Society's library. The size of each document in pages appears 
at the end of each entry and is enclosed in (). 



" Ezra Shapiro. "A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh", BYTE Magazine . October 1987, pp. 121-123 
(3 pages) 

Susan Lammers, "Jef Raskin", Programmers at Work . 1989, pp. 226-245 (20 pages) 

•• Jef Raskin and Apple Computer, The Genesis and History of the Macintosh Project. February 
1981 (5 pages) 

Jef Raskin and Apple Computer, The Macintosh Research Project : Progress Report of July 1980 , 
July 1980 (9 pages) 

Jef Raskin and Apple Computer. The Macintosh Project : Selected Papers . February 1980 
(171 pages) 

" Jef Raskin, Inf ormation Appliances- A New Industry . February 1986 (7 pages) 

* Oavid Thornburg, "The Race Goes to the Swyft", A* Magazine . November 1985, pp. 86-89 
(4 pages) 

•• Jef Raskin, The Mac and Me: 15 Years of Life with the Macintosh , Draft copy. May 1994 
(42 pages) 

Owen Linzmayer, The Macintosh Bathroom Reader. Draft copy, 1994 

" John Markoff and Ezra Shapiro, "Macintosh's Other Designers", BYTE Magazine. August 1984, 
pp. 347-356 (7 pages) 

The End 



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Canon Cat Computer Historical Information 



Article Name 

Canon's Cat Computer: The Real Macintosh 



Author 

David T Craig 



Date 

01 June 1994 • Draft Copy 



Source 

DTC 

( printed on the Apple Image Writer 

dot-matrix printer ) 



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Canon's Cat Computer: The Real Macintosh 

Copyright 1994 David T. Craig ~ 01 June 1994 
941 Calle Mejia. Apt. 509, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 

( paper written for the Historical Computer Society of El Paso Texas ) 

INTRODUCTION 

In 1987 Canon USA Inc. released a new computer named the Canon Cat. This computer was 
targeted at low-level clerical workers such as secretaries. After six months on the market 
and with 20,000 units sold Canon discontinued the Cat. The Cat featured an innovative 
text-based user interface that did not rely upon a mouse, icons, or graphics. The key person 
behind the Cat was Mr. Jef Raskin, an eclectic gadgeteer, who began the design of the Cat 
during his work on the first Macintosh project at Apple Computer in 1979. 

The design and history of the Canon Cat is a fascinating story which this paper attempts to 
tell. 1 am not a Cat owner nor have i been fortunate enough to have used a Cat. All facts 
within this paper are based on various documents relating to Jef Raskin and his work at Apple 
Computer and Information Appliance, Raskin's company that created the Cat. 

THE CANON CAT: HARDWARE X 

The Cat was a 17-pound desktop computer system containing a builtin 9-inch black-and-white 
bit-mapped monitor, a single 3.5-inch 256K byte floppy disk drive, and an IBM Selectric-style 



keyboard. 



fc-tl ill 















^,,h^,- 



1, O^&M*'*^' 



cr^tU. 







C 



p^^B^tMA' 



Figure 1 - The Canon Cat hardware 



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Size 


Dimensions 




Weight 


Components 


Processor 




Memory 




Mass storage 




Display 




Keyboard 




I/O Interfaces 




Modem 




ROM 


Price 


$1495 



The product specs follow (Ezra Shapiro. A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh)- 

10.7 by 13.1 by 17.8 inches ^^ 7 

1 7 pounds /"^ 

Motorola 68000 running at 4 MHz 

256K bytes 

One 256K byte internal 3.5-inch floppy drive 

9-inch black-and-white built-in, bit-mapped 

Compatible with IBM Selectric typewriter plus 

control functions on front face of the Iceys 

One Centronics parallel port, one RS-232C serial 

port (DB-25 connector), two RJ-U Jacks (for 

telephone connections) 

Internal 300/1200 bps, Hayes compatible 

256K bytes 



THE CANON CAT: SOFTWARE 

The Cat came with an extensive collection of applications stored in ROM. These applications 
supported word processing, spell checking, mail merging, calculator calculations, 
communications, data retrieval, and programming in the FORTH or 68000 assembly languages. 
Also present in the ROM was a spelling dictionary based on the 90,000 word American 
Heritage Dictionary. System setup information and a small personal user dictionary were 
stored In 8K of battery-backed up RAM. 

The Cat's user interface made this computer unique when compared to other computers. The 
user interface was based on a simple text editor in which all data was seen as a long stream 
of text broken into pages. Special keyboard keys allowed the user to invoke various functions. 
An extra key titled "Use Front" acted as a control key. You pressed Use Front and then a 
special key to activate a specific feature. For example, the L key was marked Disk, the J key 
was marked Print, and the N key was marked Explain (Cafs context-sensitive help facility). 
Other commands existed which let you change the system's various parameters (Setup key) and 
reverse your last action (Undo key). 

When you powered on the Cat you were presented with a display that looked like a typewriter 
with a sheet of paper. Black characters appeared on a white background. A ruler bar appeared 
at the bottom of the screen. The Cat's memory held around 160K of data which was 
equivalent to 80 single-spaced printed pages. 

You moved through your data using two extra keys called Leap keys located in front the 
spacebar key and by typing strings of characters. The Cat jumped to the next occurence of 
that string. Raskin claimed that the Cat's Leap-key search method to scroll from the top to 
the bottom of a page took 2 seconds, a mouse took 4 seconds, and cursor keys took 8 seconds. 
Larger documents increased these search ratios. 

The Leap keys also controlled text selection (indicated by hllighting), deletion, copying, and 
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moving. If the selected text was a mathematical formula one keystroke with a special key 
calculated the mathematical result and the answer appeared on the screen with a dotted 
underline overlaying the original formula. If the selected text was a computer program 
written in either FORTH or 68000 assembly language, then a special key let you execute the 
program (I don't think many Cat users did any Cat programming). You performed mail merges 
by selecting columnar text data and pressing another special key. Repetitive command 
sequences could be automated by assigning commands and text strings to the Cat's numeric 
keys. One special key let you dial a selected telephone number either for voice or modem 
communications. Data received from the built in modem flowed into your text as if you had 
typed it. 

The Cat used a 256K floppy disk for storage. Each disk held the entire contents of the Cat's 
memory in addition to system configuration parameters, the user's personal spelling 
dictionary, and the bit-map for the screen. When you inserted a disk the Cat read the disk's 
entire contents into the Cat's memory including the last saved screen image. This feature 
allowed users to transfer their entire Cat environment to another Cat by just taking their 
disk from one Cat and inserting it into another Cat. 

The Cat's simple but powerful user interface received many platitudes. For example, Bruce 
Tognazzini, a computer user interface guru who worked for Apple (he now works for Sun 
Microsystems), had the following to say about the Cat ( TOG on Interface . 2nd printing, 1992, 
p. 182): 

There are some really good abstract interfaces. ... Jef Raskin's Canon Cat 
interface is another. ... Before he left the (Macintosh) project, Macintosh was 
far more dependent on the keyboard, and Raskin knew what to do with the 
keyboard, too. For example, the Find function on the Canon Cat is some 50 times 
faster than the same function on the Macintosh. Raskin didn't use "Command-key 
equivalents": he designed a true keyboard interface from the ground up. 

Ezra Shapiro in his A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosf) article had the following to say about 
the Cat: 

The Cat represents an eye-opening new approach to data storage and retrieval; it 
will surprise anyone who thought that interface design was a dying art. Though 
the basic configuration appears on the surface to be a flexible word processor, 
the Cat's computational, macro, and programming capabilities make it quite 
possible to build data structures that emulate spreadsheets and databases. 

Raskin had the following to say about the Cat in a personal letter dated July 1987: 

It is as advanced (in terms of human interface) over the Mac as the Mac was an 
advance in its day. 

JEF RASKIN AND THE FIRST MACINTOSH 

One can say that Jef Raskin began designing the Cat during his tenure at Apple Computer. 
From 197^ to 1982 Raskin was responsible at Apple for a research project called Macintosh. 

Canoj's Cat Computer The Real Macintosh (David T Craig - 01 June J99'fJ J 

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Raskin's role at Apple began as head of its publication department and ended as Manager of 

Advanced Systems. He resigned from Apple in February 1982 over a disagreement with Steve 

JobSjConcerning the Macintosh's direction. Steve Jobs toolc over Macintosh development and 

/TheMacintosh became a mini-Lisa computer which was totally opposite of Raslcln's ideas for 

/ the Macintosh. . 

jm- ti kff U'J -torn iPf, 

In Raslcin's paper r/!e Genesis and History of the l^facintosti Project (February 1981) he 
provided.the main design criteria for his thoughts on the Macintosh: 

My concepts in designing the software were extreme ease of learning, rapid (and 
thus non-frustrating) response to user desires, and compact and quickly 
developable software. Key elements in designing such a system arc freedom from 
modes, the elimination of "levels" (e.g. system level, editor level, programming 
level), and repeated use of a few consistent and easily learned concepts. Such 
software also leads to simple and brief manuals without having to sacrifice 
completeness and accuracy. The editor is similar to the LISA editor but does not 
require the expensive mouse. A careful study showed that it is probably faster to 
use than a mouse-driven editor — although it is probably not as flashy to see 
when demonstrated in a dealer's showroom. 

Raskin also had some interesting comments to say in one of his many Macintosh design memos 
concerning the intended users of the Macintosh {Design Considerations for an Anttiropoptiiiic 
Computer. 28-29 May 1979) = 

This is an outline for a computer designed for the Person In The Street (or. to 
abbreviate: the PITS); one that will be truly pleasant to use, that will require 
the user to do nothing that will threaten his or her perverse delight in being able 
to say: "I don't know the first thing about computers". 

The Macintosh's early hardware design was very similar to the Cat's design. One early 
Macintosh design from January 1980 provided a small screen, a keyboard, and two vertical 
built in disk drives. Also present in this early Macintosh design was a built in printer. 




Figure 2 - Preliminary Mock-up of Macintosh computer (circa January 1980) 



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INFORMATION APPLIANCE. THE SWYFT CARD. AND THE CANON CAT 

The company that Jef Raskin founded to implement his computing ideas was Ixated in Menlo 
Park California and was named Information Appliance Inc. Raskin's ideas about computers and 
for this company are summarized In his white paper Information Appliances^ A New Industry 
(February 1986): 

One of the prophets of the personal computer Industry, Alan Kay, has said that the 
true personal computer has not yet been made. 1 disagree. We have, as the 
ancient curse warns us, gotten what we asked for. We do Indeed have computers 
being bought by individuals for themselves; they are "personal computers". The 
problem is that many of us^'dldn't want computers in the first place — 
computers are merely boxes for running programs ~ we wanted the benefits that 
computer technology has to offer. What we wanted was to ease the workload in 
information-related areas much as washing machines and vacuum cleaners ease the 
workload in maintaining cleanliness. 

By choosing to focus on computers rather than the tasks we wanted done, we 
inherited much of the baggage that had accumulated around earlier generations of 
computers. It is more a matter of style and operating systems that need 
elaborate user interfaces to support huge application programs. These structures 
demand ever larger memories and complex peripherals. It's as if we had asked 
for a bit of part-time help and were given a bureaucracy. 

In order to gain practical experience in making a computer the engineers at Information 
Appliance first created a prototype Cat that was Implemented as a add-on board Tor the Apple 
//e computer. This card was called the SwyftCard. Though originally designed as a prototype 
for Information Appliance's internal use the financial backers of Information Appliance 
pressured Raskin to release SwyftCard as a commercial product since the Cat's development 
was taking longer than planned. The SwyftCard's retail price was $90. 



One magazine reviewer had the following to say about the SwyftCard (David Thornburg, The 
Race goes to the Swyft, A+ Magazine, November 1985): 

swfytCard is a small, multipurpose circuit board that plugs Into slot 3 on an 
Apple //e, turning it into one of the most useful tools you could ever want for 
word processing. Information retrieval, calculation, BASIC programming, and — If 
you have a modem — communication. SwyftCard has accomplished something that 
I never knew possible. It not only outperforms any Apple II word-processing 
system, but it also lets the Apple //e outperform the Macintosh. 



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THE CAT'S DEMISE 

In 1987, after six months as a product. Canon discontinued the Cat. Bruco Tognazzini, a 
computer user interface guru, had the following to say about the Cafs demise ( TOG on 
Interface. 2nd printing. 1992, p. 182): 

The Canon Cat did not sell well, but this should be attributed to the hardware on 
which it ran, as well as Canon's decision to target this ideal interface for 
professional writers almost exclusively to low-level clerical worlcers, who didn't 
need its functionality and were confused by its "invisible" interface. 

Some people have said that the reasons for the Cat's demise were political. One story says 
Canon's electronic typewriter and computer divisions fought for control of the Cat. Canon's 
president heard of this fight and ordered the divisions to resolve the matter soon. The 
matter was not resolved and the president canceled the Cat to teach the divisions a lesson. 
Another story contends that when Canon wanted to invest in Steve Jobs' new post-Apple 
company, NeXT, Jobs told Canon that it could invest only if Canon dropped the Cat. Jobs 
supposedly was very hostile toward Raskin since Raskin had created the Macintosh and Jobs 
could not stand to be associated with him in any way. Canon did buy around 16X of NeXT 
stock in June 1989 for $100 million. 



REFERENCES 

The following documents are useful in understanding Jef Raskin's work with the Macintosh 
computer, the SwyftCard. and the Cat computer. Document arrangement is by how useful I 
found them for this paper. Documents marked with * are present in the Historical Computer 
Society's library. 

Ezra Shapiro. "a Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh'.' BY TE Magazine . October 1987. pp. 121-123 "[^f^ 

Susan Lammers. Programmers at Work ,4ftt€ryt«j>M<uti]^Jfil.R^ldf^ pp. 226-245 (J-0 ^^^) 

Jef Raskin and Apple Computer, The CiPneRifi and History of thp Macintosh Project . February 
1981 •* {S fi^a) 

IK U 

John Markoff and Ezra Shapiro, Macintosh's Other Designers, BYTE Magazine. August i^Q'^. pp. 
347-356*' C^fdY'^ ■ 

Jef Raskin, Information Appliances: a New Industry^ February 1986 •* (^ ^AjliJ 
David Thornburg, The Race Goes to the Swyft, A+Mag32lD£. PP- 86-89 i^ [\ j)^-')^^ ) 



(kd, Select/ flKfif^f The End 



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Canon Cat Computer Historical Information 



Article Name 

Canon's Cat Computer: The Real Macintosh 

Author 

David T Craig 



Date 
May 1994 • Draft Copy 



Source 

DTC 

( printed on the Apple Image Writer 

dot-matrix printer ) 



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Canon's Cat Computer: The Real Macintosh 

Copyright IQS'J David T. Craig ~ May 1994 
941 Calle Mejia. Apt, 509. Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 

( paper written for the Historical Computer Society of El Paso Texas ) 



INTRODUCTION 



V^AFT cof/ 



In 1987 Canon USA Inc. released a new computer named the Canon Cat. This 
computer was targeted at low-level clerical workers such as secretaries. After six 
months on the market and with 20,000 units sold Canon discontinued the Cat. The 
Cat featured an innovative user interface that did not rely upon a mouse, icons, or 
graphics. The key person behind the Cat was Mr. Jef Raskin, an eclectic gadgeteer, 
who began the design of the Cat during his work on the first Macintosh project at 
Apple Computer in 1979. 

The design and history of this computer is a fascinating story which this paper 
attempts to tell. I am not a Cat owner nor have 1 unfortunately ever used a Cat. All 
facts within this paper are based on various documents relating to Jef Raskin and his 
work at Apple and Information Appliance, Raskin's company that created the Cat. 

THE CANON CAT: HARDWARE 

The Cat is a 17-pound desktop computer system containing a builtin 9 inch 
black-and-white bit-mapped monitor, a single 3.5-inch 256K byte floppy disk drive, 
and an IBN Selectric-style keyboard. 



Figure 1 - The Canon Cat hardware 



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Size 


Dimensions 




Weight 


Components 


Processor 




Memory 




Mass storage 




Display 




Keyboard 




I/O Interfaces 




Modem 




ROM 


Price 


$1495 



The product specs follow (Ezra Shapiro, A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh)-- 

10.7 by 13.1 by 17.8 inches 

17 pounds 

Motorola 68000 running at 4 MHz 

256K bytes 

One 256K byte internal 3.5- inch floppy drive 

9-inch blacl<-and-white built-in, bit-mapped 

Compatible with IBM Selectric typewriter plus 

control functions on front face of the l<eys 

One Centronics parallel port, one RS-232C serial 

port (DB-25 connector), two RJ-11 jacks (for 

telephone connections) 

Internal 300/1200 bps, Hayes compatible 

256K bytes 



THE CANON CAT: SOFTWARE 

The Cat came with an extensive collection of applications stored in the Cat's ROM. 
These applications supported word processing, spell checking, mail merging, 
calculator calculations, communications, data retrieval, and programming in the 
FORTH or 68000 assembly languages. Also present in the ROM was a spelling 
dictionary based on the 90,000 word American Heritage Dictionary. System setup 
information and a small personal user dictionary were stored in 8K of battery-backed 
up RAM. 

The Cat's user interface made this computer unique when compared to other 
computers. The user interface was based on a simple text editor in which all data 
was seen as a long stream of text broken Into pages. Special keyboard keys allowed 
the user to invoke various functions. An extra key titled "Use Front" acted as a 
control key, you pressed Use Front and then the special keys to activate a specific 
feature. For example, the L key is marked Disk, the J key is marked Print, and the N 
key is marked Explain (Cat's context-sensistive help facility). Other commands exist 
which let you change the system's various parameters (Setup key) and reverse your 
last action (Undo key). 

When you powered on the Cat you were presented with a display that looks like a 
typewriter with a sheet of paper. Black characters appear on a white background. A 
ruler bar appears at the bottom of the screen. The Cat's memory holds around 160K 
of data which is equivalent to 80 single-spaced printed pages. 

You moved through your data using two extra keys called Leap keys located near the 
spacebar key and by typing strings of characters. The Cat jumped to the next 
occurance of that string. Raskins claimed that the Cat's Leap-key search method to 

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scroll from the top to the bottom of a page took 2 seconds, a mouse took 4 seconds, 
and cursor keys took 8 seconds. Larger documents increased these search ratios. 

The Leap keys also controlled text selection (indicated by hi lighting), deletion, 
copying, and moving, if the selected text was a mathematical formula one keystroke 
with a special key calculated the mathematical result and the answer appeared on 
the screen with a dotted underline overlaying the orginal formula. If the selected 
text was a computer program written in either FORTH or 68000 assembly language, 
then a special key let you execute the program (I dought many Cat users did any Cat 
programming). You performed mail merges by selecting columnar text data and 
pressing another special key. Repetitive command sequences could be automated by 
assigning commands and text strings to the Cat's numeric keys. One special key let 
you dial a selected telephone number either for voice or modem communications. 
Data received from the builtin modem flowed into your text as if you had typed it. 

The Cat used a 256K floppy disk for storage. Each disk held the entire contents of 
the Cat's memory in additim to system configuration parameters, the user's personal 
spelling dictionary, and the bit-map for the screen. When you inserted a disk the Cat 
read the disk's entire contents into the Cat's memory including the last saved screen 
image. This feature allowed users to transfer their entire Cat environment to 
another Cat by just taking their disk from one Cat and inserting it into another Cat. 

The Cat's simple but powerful user interface received many platitudes. For example, 
Bruce Togna22ini, a computer user interface guru who worked for Apple (he now 
works for Sun Microsystems), had the following to say about the Cat ( TOG m 
Interface, 2nd printing, 1992, p. 182)= 

There are some really good abstract interfaces, ... Jef Raskin's Canon Cat 
interface is another. ... Before he left the (Macintosh) project, Macintosh was 
far more dependent on the keyboard, and Raskin knew what to do with the 
keyboard, too. For example, the Find function on the Canon Cat is some 50 times 
faster than the same function on the Macintosh. Raskin didn't use "Command-key 
equivalents": he designed a true keyboard interface from the ground up. 

Ezra Shapiro in his A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh article had the following to say 
about the Cat: 

The Cat represents an eye-opening new approach to data storage and retrieval; it 
will suprise anyone who thought that interface design was a dying art. Though 
the basic configuration appears on the surface to be a flexible word processor, 
the Cat's computational, macro, and programming capabilities mako it quite 
possible to build data structures that emulate spreadsheets and databases. 

Raskin had the following to say about the Cat in a personal letter dated July 1987= 

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It i3 as advanced (in terms of human interface) over the Mac as the Mac was an 
advance in its day. 

JEF RASKIN AND THE FIRST MACINTOSH 

One can say that Jef RaBl<in began designing the Cat during his tenure at Apple 
Computer. From 1978 to 1982 Rasl<in was responcible at Apple for a research 
project called Macintosh. Raskin's role at Apple began as head of its publication 
department and ended as Manager of Advanced Systems. He resigned from Apple in 
February 1982 over a disagreement with Steve Jobs concerning the Macintosh's 
direction. Steve Jobs took over Macintosh devlopment and the Macintosh became a 
mini-Lisa computer which was totally opposite of Raskin's ideas for the Macintosh. 

In Rask in's paper The Genesis and History of the flacintosh Project (Febraury 1 98 1 ) 
he provided the main design criteria for his thoughts on the Macintosh: 

My concepts in designing the software were extreme ease of learning, rapid (and 
thus non-frustrating) response to user desries. and compact and quickly 
developable software. Key elements In designing such a system are freedom from 
modes, the elimination of "levels" (e.g. system level, editor level, programming 
level), and repeated use of a few consistent and easily learned concepts. Such 
software also leads to simple and brief manuals without having to sacrifice 
completeness and accuracy. The editor is si miliar to the LISA editor but does not 
require the expensive mouse. A careful study showed that it is probably taster to 
use than a mouse-driven editor — although it is probably not as flashy to see 
when demonstrated in a dealer's showroom. 

Raskin also had some interesting comments to say in one of his many Macintosh 
design memos concerning the users of the Macintosh {Design Considerations for an 
Anthropophiiic Computer, 28-29 May 1 979)= 

This is an outline for a computer designed for the Person In The Street (or, to 
abbreviate: the PITS); one that will be truly pleasant to use, that will require 
the user to do nothing that will threaten his or her perverse delight in being able 
to say: "I don't know the first thing about computers". 

The Macintosh's early hardware design was very similar to the Cat's design. One 
early Macintosh design provided a small screen, a keyboard, and two vertical builtin 
disk drives. Also present in this early Macintosh design was a builtin printer. 



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Figure 2 - The early Apple Macintosh hardware 

INFORMATION APPLIANCE, THE SWYFT CARD. AND THE CANON CAT 

The company that Jef Raskin founded to implement his computing ideas was located 
in Menlo Park California and was named Information Appliance Inc. Raskin's ideas for 
this company are summarized in his white paper Infirmatiai Appliances^ A New 
Industry (February 1 986)= 

One of the prophets of the personal computer industry, Alan Kay. has siad that the 
true personal computer has not yet been made. 1 disagree. We have, as the 
ancient curse warns us, gotten what we asked for. We do indeed have computers 
being bought by individuals for themselves; they are "personal computers". The 
problem is that many of use didn't want computers in the first place -- 
computers are merely boxes for running programs ~ we wanted the benefits that 
computer technology has to offer. What we wanted was to ease the workload in 
information-related areas much as washing machines and vacuum cleaners ease the 
workload in maintaining cleanliness. 

By choosing to focus on computers rather than the tasks we wanted done, we 
inherited much of the baggage that had accumulated around earlier generations of 
computers. It is more a matter of style and operating systems that need 
elaborate user interfaces to support huge application programs. These structures 
demand ever larger memories and complex peripherals. It's as if we had asked 
for a bit of part-time help and were given a bureaucracy. 

In order to gain practical experience in making a computer the engineers at 
Information Appliance first created a prototype Cat that was implemented as a 
add-on board for the Apple //e computer. This card was called the SwyftCard. 
Though originally designed as a prototype for Information Appliance's internal use the 
financial backers of Information Appliance pressured Raskin to release SwyftCard as 
a commercial product since the Cat's development was taking longer than planned. 
The 5wyftCard's retail price was $90. 



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One magazine reviewer had the following to say about the SwyftCard (David 
Thornburg, The Race goes to the Swyft, A+ hagazine, November 1 985)= 

SwfytCard is a small, multipurpose circuit board that plugs into slot 3 on an 
Apple //e, turning it into one of th most useful tools you could ever want for 
word processing. Information retrieval, calculation, BASIC programming, and - If 
you have a modem - communication. SwyftCard has accomplished something that i 
never knew possible. It not only outperforms any Apple II word-processing 
system, but it also lets the Apple //e outperform the Macintosh. 

THE CAT'S DEMISE 

In 1987, after six months as a product. Canon discontinued the Cat. Bruce 
Tognazzini, a computer user interface guru, had the following to say about the Cat's 
demise ( TOG on Interface , 2nd printing, 1992, p. 182)= 

The Canon Cat did not sell well, but this should be attributed to the hardware on 
which it ran, as well as Canon's decision to target this ideal interface for 
professional writers almost exclusively to low-level clericla workers, who didn't 
need its functionality and were confused by its "invisible" interface. 

Some people have said that the reasons for the Cat's demise were political. One 
story says Canon's electronic typewriter division and the computer division fought 
for control of the Cat. Canon's president heard of this fight and ordered the 
divisions to resolve the matter soon. The matter was not resolved and the president 
cancelled the Cat to teach the divisions a lesson. Another story contends that when 
Canon wanted to invest in Steve Jobs' new post-Apple company, NeXT, Jobs told 
Canon that it could invest only if Canon dropped the Cat. Jobs supposedly was very 
hostile toward Raskin since Raslcin had created the Macintosh and could not stand to 
be associated with him in any way. Canon did buy around 16^ of NeXT stock in June 
1989 for $100 million. 



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REFERENCES 

The following documents are useful in understanding Jef Raskin's work with the 
Macintosh computer, the SwyftCard, and the Cat computer. Document arrangement is 
by how useful I found them for this paper. Documents marked with ** are present in 
the Historical Computer Society's library. 

Ezra Shapiro, A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh, BYTE Magazine, October 1987. pp. 121-123 

(figure 1 is from this article) ** 
Susan Lammers. Programmers at Work, Interview with Jef Raskin, pp. 226-245 
Jef Raskin and Apple Computer, The Genesis and History of the Macintosh Project, February 

1981 " 
John Markoff and Ezra Shapiro, Macintosh's Other Designers, BYTE Magazine, August 1984, pp. 

347-356 " 
Jef Raskin. Information Appliances: a New Industry, February 1986 " 
David Thornburg, The Race Goes to the Swyft, A+ Magazine, pp. 86-89 



The End 



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Canon Cat Computer Historical Information [ 



Article Name 

Canon's Cat Computer: The Real Macintosh 



Author 

David T Craig 



Date 

June 1994 



Source 

Internet 

http://205.169.182.205/ 

archaic_apples/ canon/ cat/ html 

January 2000 



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Monday, January 31, 2000 



Canon's Cat Compuler: The Real Macintosh 



INTRODUCTION 



Canon's Cat Computer: The Real Macintosh 

Copyright 1994 David T. Craig -- 19 June 1994 
941 Calle Mejia, Apt. 509, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501 

CompuServe 71533.606 

HTML Version (c) Copyright June 28, 1998 - Steve White 

swhite@stf.org 

This paper was written for Historically Brewed , the newsletter of the 

Historical Computer Society of EI Paso, Texas. Contact Mr. David Greelish at 

CompuServe address 100116.217 if you're interested in old computers and 

want to read fascinating stories about such computers and the people behind 

them. 

If many faukes in this paper youfynde, 

Yet think not the correctors blynde; 

IfArgos heere hymselfe had beene, 

He should perchance not all have seene. 

Richard Shacklock (1565) 



In 1987 Canon USA Inc. released a new computer named the Canon Cat. This computer was targeted at low-level clerical worked such as secretaries. After six 
months on the market and with 20,000 units sold. Canon discontinued the Cat. The Cat featured an innovative text based user interface that did not rely upon a 
mouse, icons, or graphics. The key person behind the Cat was Mr. Jef Raskin, an eclectic gadgeteer, who began the design of the Cat during his work on the first 
Macintosh project at Apple Computer in 1979. 

The design and history of the Canon Cat is a fascinating story which this paper attempts to tell. I am not a Cat owner nor have I been fortunate enough to have used 
a Cat. All facts within this paper are based on various documents relating to Jef Raskin and his work at Apple Computer and Information AppUance, Raskin's 
company that created the Cat. 

CAT HARDWARE 

The Cat was a 17 pound desktop computer system containing a built in 9 inch black-and-white bit mapped monitor, a single 3.5-inch 256K byte floppy disk drive, 
and an IBM Selectric-style keyboard. 







Figure 1 - The Canon Cat hardware 



The product specs follow (A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh ): 



Size 


Dimensions 




Weight 


Components 


Processor 




Memory 




Mass Storage 




Display 




Keyboard 




I/O Interface 




Modem 




ROM 


Price 


$1495 



10.7 by 13.3 by 17.8 inches 

17 pounds 

Motorola 68000 running at 5 MHz 

256K bytes 

One 256K byte internal 3.5-inch floppy drive 

9-inch black-and-white built-in, bit mapped 

Con^atible with IBM Selectric typewriter plus 

control functions on front face of the keys 

One Centronics parallel port, one RS-232C serial 

port £DB-25 connector), two RJ-11 jacks {for 

telephone connections) 

internal 300/1200 bps, Hayes compatible 

256K bytes 

http;//205.1 69.1 82. 205/archaic_apples/canon/cat. html 



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Monday, January 31 , 2000 Canon's Cat Computer; The Real Macintosh Page: 2 

CAT SOFTWARE 

The Cat came with an extensive collection of apphcations stored in ROM. These apphcations supported word processing, spell checking, mail merging, calculator 
calculations, communications, data retrieval, and programming in the FORTH of 68000 assembly languages. Also present in the ROM was a spelling dictionary 
based on the 90,000 word American Heritage Dictionary. System setup information and a small personal user dictionary were stored in 8K of battery backed up 
RAM. 

The Cat's user interface made this computer unique when compared to other computers. The user interface was based on a simple text editor in which all data was 
seen as a long stream of text broken into pages. Special keyboard keys allowed the user to invoke various functions. An extra key titled "Use Front" acted as a 
control key. You pressed Use Front and then a special key to activate a specific feature. For example, the L key was marked Disk, the J key was marked Print, and 
the N key was marked Explain (Cat's context sensitive help facility). Other commands existed which let you change the system's various parameters (Setup key) 
and reverse your last action (Undo key). 

When you powered on the Cat you were presented with a display Uiat looked hke a typewriter with a sheet of paper. Black characters appeared on a white 
background. A ruler bar appeared at the bottom of the screen. The Cat's memory held around 160K of data which was equivalent to 80 single-spaced printed 
pages. 

You moved through your data using two extra keys called Leap keys located in front of the spacebar key and by typing strings of characters. The Cat jumped to the 
next occurrence of that string. Raskin claimed that the Cat's Leap-key search method to scroll from the top to the bottom of the page took 2 seconds, a mouse took 
4 seconds, and cursor took 8 seconds. Larger documents increased these search ratios. 

The Leap keys also controlled text selection (indicated by hilighting), deletion, copying, and moving. If the selected text was a mathematical formula one keystroke 
with a special key calculated the mathematical result and the answer appeared on the screen with a dotted underline overlaying the original formula. If the selected 
text was a computer program written in either FORTH or 68000 assembly language, then a special key let you execute the program (I don't think many Cat users 
did any Cat programming). You performed mail merges by selecting columnar text data and pressing another special key. Repetitive command sequences could be 
automated by assigning commands and text strings to the Cat's numeric keys. One special key let you dial a selected telephone number either for voice or modem 
communications. Data received from the built-in modem flowed into your text as if you had typed it. 

The Cat used a 256K floppy disk for storage. Each disk held the entire contents of the Cat's memory in addition to system configuration parameters, the user's 
personal spelling dictionary, and the bit-map for the screen. When you inserted a disk the Cat read the disk's entire contents into the Cat's memory including the 
last saved screen image. This feature allowed users to transfer their entire Cat environment to another Cat by just taking their disk from one Cat and inserting it into 
another Cat. 

The Cat's simple but powerful user interface received many plaudits. For example, Bruce Tognazzini, a computer user interface guru who worked for Apple (he 
now works for Sun Microsystems) had the following to say about the Cat (JOG on Interface , 2nd printing, 1992, p. 182): 

There are some really good abstract interfaces, ... Jef Raskin's Canon Cat interface is another ... Before he left the (Macintosh) project, Macintosh was 
far more dependent on the keyboard, and Raskin knew what to do with the keyboard, too. For example, the Find function on the Canon Cat is some 50 
limes faster than the same function on the Macintosh. Raskin didn't use "Command-key equivalents": he designed a true keyboard interface from the 
ground up. 

Ezra Shapiro in his A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh article had the following to say about the Cat: 

The Cat represents an eye-opening new approach to data storage and retrieval; it will surprise anyone who thought that interface design was a dying art. 
Though the basic configuration appears on the surface to be a flexible word processor, the Cat's computational, macro, and programming capabilities 
make it quite possible to build data structures that emulate spreadsheets and databases. 

Raskin had the following to say about the Cat and the Apple Macintosh in a personal letter dated July 1987: 

It is as advanced (in terms of human interface) over the Mac as the Mac was an advance in its day. 

Raskin's thoughts on the Cat's user interface and other user interfaces from the perspective of 1994 follow (The Mac and Me: 15 Years of Life with the 
Macintosh , Draft copy. May 1 994): 

The current paradigm of using application programs is inherently wrong from an interface design point of view. This is widely recognized, but the 
solution offered is to make them inter operable, which solves some of the problems but by no means all. GUIs as presently designed and used are an 
interface dead end. Though they can be patched endlessly, a large jump in usability can only come from a completely different approach. The Cat 
computer, which I developed for Canon, demonstrated that my alternate approach is implementable and both more productive and more pleasant than 
GUIs. 

JEF RASKIN AND THE FIRST MACINTOSH 

One can say that Jef Raskin began designing the Cat during his tenure at Apple Computer. He started at Apple in January 1978 as head of its pubHcations 
department. From 1979 to 1982 Raskin was responsible at Apple for a research project called Macintosh. He resigned from Apple in February 1982 when he was 
Manager of Advanced Systems over a disagreement with Steve Jobs, one of Apple's founders, concerning the Macintosh's direction. Steve Jobs took over 
Macintosh development and the Macintosh became a mini-Lisa computer which was totally opposite of Raskin's ideas for the Macintosh. 

In Raskin's paper The Genesis and History of the Macintosh Project (February 198 1) he provided his thoughts on the main software design criteria for the 
Macintosh: 

My concepts in designing the software were extreme ease of learning, rapid (and thus non frustrating) response to user desires, and compact and quickly 
developable software. Key elements in designing such a system are freedom from modes, the elimination of "levels" (e.g. system level, editor level, 
programming level), and repeated use of a few consistent and easily learned concepts. Such software also leads to simple and brief manuals without 
having to sacrifice completeness and accuracy. The editor is similar to the USA editor but does not require the expensive mouse. A careful study showed 
that is is probably faster to use than a mouse driven editor - although it is probably not as flashy to see when demonstrated in a dealer's showroom. 

In 1994 Raskin had the following to say about the original Macintosh's software design {The Mac and Me: 15 Years of Life with the Macintosh ): 

My unifying .software originally was to be a graphics-and-text editor within which applications could run as additional commands (via menus), all input 
and output being through the interface designed for the editor Later, the PARC desktop metaphor was adopted from the Lisa group (and that from the 
Xerox Alto and the Star computers). Due to the incredible work of the Mac software team, the necessary code was designed and squeezed into a Toolbox 
that fit into a relatively small ROM (Read Only Memory) that we could afford to put into the product. 

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Raskin also had some interesting comments to say in one of his many Macintosh design memos concerning the intended users of the Macintosh (Design 
Considerations for an Anthropophilic Computer, 28-29 May 1979): 

This is an outline for a computer designed for the Person In The Street (or, to abbreviate: the PITS); one that will be truly pleasant to use, that will require 
the user to do nothing that will threaten his or her perverse delight in being able to say: "I don't know the first thing about computers". 

The Macintosh's early hardware design was very similar to the Cat's design. One early Macintosh design from January 1980 provided a small screen, a keyboard, 
and two vertical built-in disk drives. Also present in this early Macintosh des ign was a built-in printer. 



Figure 2 - Preliminary Mock-up of Macintosh computer (circa January 1 980) 

INFORMATION APPLIANCE, THE SWYFTCARD, AND THE CANON CAT 

The company that Jef Raskin founded in 1984 to implement his computing ideas was located in Menlo Park California and was named Information Appliance, Inc. 
Raskin's ideas about computers and the basic concepts for this company are summarized in his white paper Information Appliances: A New Industry (February 
1986): 

One of the prophets of the personal computer industry, Alan Kay, has said that the true personal computer has not yet been made. I disagree. We have, 
as the ancient curse warns us, gotten what we asked for. We do indeed have computers being bought by individuals for themselves: they are "personal 
computers". The problem is that many of us didn't want computers in the first place - computers are merely boxes for running programs - we wanted 
the benefits that computer technology has to offer. What we wanted was to ease the workload in information related areas much as washing machines and 
vacuum cleaners ease the workload in maintaining cleanliness. 

By choosing to focus on computers rather than the tasks we wanted done, we inherited much of the baggage that had accumulated around earlier 
generations of computers. It is more a matter of style and operating systems that need elaborate user interfaces to support huge application programs. 
The.ie structures demand ever larger memories and complex peripherals. It's as if we had asked for a bit of part-time help and were given a bureaucracy. 

Information Appliances goal was to create a computer system that would be both powerful and easy to use. The company developed a prototype Cat system code 
named "SWYFT". Doug McKenna, a former company director and now the key person behind the Macintosh development tool Resorcerer, said that he proposed 
that "SWYFT" be read as "Superb With Your Favorite Typing" (personal phone call, 15 June 1 994). Funding for this company came from around a dozen venture 
capitalists. 

Raskin's business plan was to create and market the Cat using only Information Appliance. But the company's backers thought Information Appliances could not 
do this as well as a bigger and akeady established company. As such, the venture capitalists talked vrith several computer companies that had an interest in die Cat 
and selected Canon to market the Cat. Canon was responsible for giving die "SWYFT" the product name "Cat" (Doug McKenna, personal phone call, 15 June 
1994). 

While the Information Appliance engineers developed the Cat the company's venture capitalists thought it would be beneficial for the company to release some of 
the Cat's technology as a small board based product. The result of the was an add-on plug-in board for tiie Apple lie computer. This card was called the 
SwyftCard, a name which obviously was based upon the Cat's code name. The SwyftCard retail price was $90. It is interesting to read Raskin's comments 
concerning the origins of the SwyftCard (Programmers at Work , p. 237): 

We didn 't get into business to produce a board for the Apple //e, but it seemed like such a good idea that I would have felt very bad not to have released 
the product. I saw a lot of good products at Apple and Xerox pass from desktop to desktop, and never get to the market. 

Information Appliance wrote the SwyftCard's on-board software in FORTH, a computer language which Raskin saw as ideal for this product since it was compact 
and inexpensive to implement. Raskin's comments about how he hired a FORTH programmer show the distance Raskin had traveled from Apple, at least from a 
legal perspective (Programmers at Work , p. 238): 

/ went out and hired a FORTH programmer and a few other people, mostly personal friends of mine. Nobody from Apple. I didn 't touch the company. I 
didn 't want to get into any legal hassles, and Apple was nasty enough then that I worried about such things. 

The SwyftCard was well received by those who used it. One magazine reviewer had the following to say about the SwyftCard (David Thombum, The Race goes 
to the Swyft , p. 86): 

SwyftCard is a .':mall, multipurpose circuit board that plugs into slot 3 on an Apple //e, turning it into one of the most useful tools you could ever want for 
word processing, information retrieval, calculation, BASIC programming, and — if you have a modem — communication. SwyftCard has accomplished 
something that I never knew possible. It not only outperforms any Apple II word-processing system, but it also lets the Apple //e outperform the 
Macintosh. 

The SwyftCard reviewer also had the following to say about the philosophy behind the SwyftCard (p. 89): 

SwyftCard was the result of extensive thought about how people might want to use computers if they had a choice in the matter, and as a result is a 
spectacular piece of programming. 

THE CATS DEMISE 

After six months as a product. Canon discontinued the Cat in 1987. Bruce Tognazzini, a computer user interface gum, had the following to say about the Cat's 
demise (TOG on Interface , 2nd printing, 1992, p. 182): 

The Canon Cat did not sell well, but this should be attributed to the hardware on which it ran, as well as Canon's decision to target this ideal interface for 
professional writers almost exclusively to low-level clerical workers, who didn't need its functionality and were confu.ied by its "invisible" interface. 

Some people have said that the reasons for the Cat's demise were political. One story says Canon's electronic typewriter and computer divisions fought for control 
of die Cat. Canon's president learned of this fight and ordered the division to resolve the matter soon. The matter was no resolved and the president canceled the 
Cat to teach the divisions a lesson. Another story contends that when Canon wanted to invest in Steve Jobs' new post-Apple company, NeXT, jobs told Canon 
that it could invest only if Canon dropped the Cat. Jobs supposedly was very hostile toward Raskin since Raskin had created the Macintosh and Jobs could not 
stand to be associated with him in any way. Canon did buy around 16% of NeXT stock in June 1989 for $100 million. (These last two reason were told to me by 
Owen Linzmayer, the author of the forthcoming Macintosh book The Macintosh Bathroom Reader ). 

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Raskin's thoughts on the Cat's demise follow (The Mac and Me: 15 Years of Life with the Macintosh ): 

Canon, possibly because the moribund Electronic Typewriter Division had been given the task, failed to market the product effectively, and it is now a 
dead cat. 

When interviewed in 1986 Raskin answered the interview question "What do you think is the biggest problem that your business faces?" (Programmers at Work , 
p. 239) 

How in the world do you sell something that's different? That's the biggest problem. The world's not quite ready to believe. It's like in the early days at 
Apple, they said, "What's it good for?" We couldn't give a really good answer so they assumed the machine wasn't going to sell. But I do know the way 
I plan to sell my product is by word of mouth. Some people will try it and say, "This product really gets my job done. It doesn 't have fifteen fonts. I 
can't print it out in old gothic banners five feet long, but I sure got that article finished under the deadline. " That's how I can sell it. Later, people will 
understand it. 

In retrospect, it appears that most computer users just didn't get it when it came to the Cat. 

In 1989 Information Appliance ended. Dough McKenna, one of the company directors, claimed that the venture capitalists behind Information Appliance no longer 
wanted to be part of what they considered a risky venture so they pulled out their financial resources causing the company to close its doors (personal phone call, 
15 June 1994). 

Information Apphance also had on the drawing boards at the time of its demise a 2-lb, Cat laptop. Only around two were ever built, none exist today (personal 
phone call with Doug McKenna, 15 June 1994). 

Jef Raskin currently owns the patents that formed the Cat's core technology. These include a patent for the Cat's LEAP method and the saving and loading of all 
the Cat's RAM to disk and from disk. Information Appliance licensed several of these patents to other computer companies, but these companies did nothing with 
this technology. 

One other comment about Information Appliance and the Cat deserves mentioning. Raskin claimed the Cat was made on budget and on schedule, a claim that is 
very rare in the computing industry (The Mac and Me: 15 Years of Life with the Macintosh ). 

REFERENCES 

The following documents are useful in understanding Jef Raskin's work with the Macintosh computer, the SwyftCard, and the Cat computer. Document 
arrangement is by how useful I found them for this paper. Documents marked with * are present in the Historical Computer Society's library. The size of each 
document in pages appears at the end of each entry and is enclosed in ()'s. 

* Ezra Shapiro, "A Spiritual Heir to the Macintosh", BYTE Magazine . October 1987, pp. 121-123 (3 pages) 
Susan Lammers, "Jef Raskin", Pro grammers at Work . 1989, pp. 226-245 (20 pages) 

* David Thornburg, "The Race Goes to the Swyft", A+ Magazine . November 1985, pp. 86-89 (4 pages) 

* Jef Raskin and Apple Computer. The Genesis and History of the Macintosh Project . February 1981 (5 pages) 

Jef Raskin and Apple Computer, The Macintosh Research Project: Progress Report of July 1980 . July 1980 (9 pages) 
Jef Raskin and Apple Computer, The Macintosh Project: Selected Papers . February 1980 (171 pages) 

* Jef Raskin, Information Appliances: A New Industry . February 1986 (7 pages) 

* Jef Raskin, The Mac and Me: 15 Years of Life with the Macintosh . Draft copy. May 1994 (42 pages) 
Owen Linzmayer, The Macintosh Bathroom Reader . Draft copy, 1994 

Bruce Tognazzini, TOG on Interface . 2nd printing, 1992 

* John Markoff and Ezra Shapiro, "Macintosh's Other Designers", BYTE Magazine . August 1984, pp. 347-356 (7 pages) 

The End 

Retum to Archaic App les. 

Found an error in this document? E-Mail me ! 



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